>> Hey. What you doing?
>> Cleft lip and palate is the most common congenital facial anomaly. It occurs in about
1 in 800 births.
>> Celfting occurs at about the 6 to 8 week point of pregnancy. The neural tube, which becomes
the spinal cord, develops and the face forms in arches as it comes around. But sometimes
an error happens, and in this case may result in a cleft lip. A cleft in an incomplete fusion
of any type of anatomical structure.
>> There’s a spectrum in the severity of a cleft. You can have a cleft lip on one side,
you can have it on both sides. It can involve only part of the lip, which we call incomplete,
or it can involve the entire lip and extend into the floor of the nose. And we call that
a complete cleft. It can also extend even further through the palate. And we call that
a complete cleft lip and palate. The kids may look a little different, but they’re
still normal kids.
>> The overwhelming majority of our patients
lead very healthy, very, really normal lives.
>> So we’re just going to go down this hallway.
>> Cleft palate alone is typically not diagnosed until after birth. But more and more cleft
lip is diagnosed prenatally. It can be seen on an ultrasound at 20 weeks.
>> It’s always coming off the experience of their ultrasounds, wanting to figure out
if it’s a boy or if it’s a girl.
>> Is this your first pregnancy?
>> No, my second.
>> That initial hope, excitement and joy then gets replaced with anxiety and fear about
the future for their unborn child. But can manage to kind of bring them back to that
place of hope and joy.
There is a huge, huge improvement in cosmetic outcome. Which I know is…
>> And we tell them what to expect, and briefly about cleft lip and palate care.
>> We then perform our own series of imaging studies.
Again, this is a 3D rendering. So typically…
High resolution ultrasound, 3D ultrasound, 4D ultrasound. We sit down with the
family, review the data.
>> We found that meeting families prenatally really helps educate them. And helps them
understand so that they are a little better prepared. And we can take it from there.
>> The doctor is gonna treat each patient through to maturity. Which I think is a really
nice thing for families. You get to develop a really deep relationship with each other.
In the grand scheme of life, and everything that’s going to happen to him, this is one
of the most important things.
>> So we may meet our new patients as infants, shortly after birth, but we continue to see
them on a regular basis all the way through high school and even beyond.
>> Our cleft lip and palate team sees about 700 to 800
patients each year.
>> And we perform over 1,000 surgical procedures related to cleft lip and palate each year.
We are a very high volume cleft center. And what this means for patients coming to see
us is that we have experience in all the nuances of cleft lip and palate care, from the initial
repairs, to secondary procedures, to routine, regular care throughout childhood and adolescence.
>> And so when someone comes to see me or one of my colleagues, they’re getting somebody
who’s doing this day in and day out.
>> People come here from all over the country, they come here from all over the world.
>> What makes our team special is not only the fact that we have amazing surgeons, but
their dedication to their patients.
>> And it just was very comforting knowing that you’re tiny, tiny little baby is going
to be placed in her arms to have something very serious done to him. I would tell other
parents to come to CHOP because there’s no better place. It’s been a wonderful place.