Assessment of Dehiscence and Fenestration in Bilateral Cleft Lip and Palate Patients

Cleft lip and palate are breaks in continuity of tissues of upper lip, the hard and soft palate or both. It can be unilateral or bilateral. It results due to incomplete fusion of the facial structures during growth. It poses many problems to the child such as difficulty in feeding, swallowing, nasal twang to voice and chronic ear infections. Dental problems include absence or missing one or more teeth, deformation in the normal tooth morphology, and a lack of adequate amount of soft and hard tissue in the affected area. Preoperative orthodontic treatment is a must to align the teeth in the arches before any orthognathic surgery is performed to correct the underlying skeletal imbalance. It is imperative to evaluate the amount of bone level before planning any orthodontic, periodontal and surgical therapy. The amount of alveolar bone loss in an ungrafted cleft region of cleft patients has been evaluated using various radiographic method and it has been reported that there was increased amount of loss of alveolar bone in the affected site compared with controls. Very few studies have used CBCTas a method of evaluating the bone level in cleft patients. Hence this article discusses the evaluation of dehiscence's and fenestrations in bilateral cleft lip and palate patients using cone beam computed tomography.