Craniofacial pattern of parents of children with cleft lip and-or palate anomaly : a comparative cross-sectional cephalometric study

Abstract EN

Congenital abnormalities are the greatest concern for people who are considering having a child, birth of a cleft child is emotionally distressing to the parents, and so, discrimination of these potential parents might be of great help.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether there are variations in the craniofacial morphology between parents of children having cleft lip and/or palate and parents of children without clefts in an Iraqi sample.

From 356 clinically examined fathers and mothers, two groups were derived, a study group consisting of 40 sets of parents who have a child with cleft lip and/or palate deformity, and a control group of 40 sets of parents who have healthy (non cleft) children.

Twenty measurements were obtained from 320 radiographs of these subjects (160 lateral, 160 frontal).

The mean, standard deviation, confidence interval and range were obtained, and the means of all measurements were tested by using computerized statistical program (SPSS) for significant statistical differences.

The following results were obtained : 1-The parental craniofacial complex in orofacial clefting is distinctive in comparison to the parents of children without cleft lip and / or palate.

2-Gonial angle, posterior cranial base length, posterior maxillary height have a nonsignificant difference between study and control groups.

3-Cranial base angle, lower posterior facial height, and nasal cavity width were increased in all study groups.

4-Upper anterior facial height, cranial and bizygomaticofrontal suture widths were decreased in all study groups.

5-Anterior cranial base length, cranial base length, and palatal length were longer in study mothers group, while they were shorter in study fathers groups in comparison to control groups.

6-These observations are important in that they provide further evidence for craniofacial features of non-cleft relatives of cleft lip and / or palate probands being attributed to genetic susceptibility that predisposes to clefting.