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Treatments and drugs
By Mayo Clinic staffA health care team that specializes in cleft lip and cleft palate is ideal because the condition often affects other areas of your child's health. Treatment involves surgery to repair the defect and therapies to improve any related conditions.
Surgery
Children with cleft lip should have surgery between birth and 3 months. Children with cleft palate should have surgery during the first 12 months of life. Following the initial cleft repair, your doctor may recommend follow-up surgeries to improve speech or improve the appearance of the lip and nose. Surgeries typically are performed in this order:
- Cleft lip repair — between birth and 3 months
- Cleft palate repair — by 1 year of age
- Follow-up surgeries — between age 2 and late teen years
For children with cleft palate, ear tubes also may be placed during the first surgery to ventilate the middle ear and prevent hearing loss. Your doctor can determine the optimal time for all needed surgeries.
Therapies
Your doctor may recommend additional treatments based on continuing assessment of your child's speech, developmental and cognitive abilities. These may include speech and psychological therapies.
Emerging treatments
Based on new research, it may someday be routine for doctors to repair cleft lip and cleft palate in fetuses before birth. Doctors hope that minimally invasive surgical techniques will make this possible, since the risk to the mother and baby is reduced by smaller incisions. One major advantage of in utero repair of cleft lip and cleft palate is "scarless healing," a phenomenon in which the surgical wounds made in a young fetus heal with little or no noticeable scarring. This early repair also has the potential to interrupt the secondary effects of cleft lip and cleft palate, such as speech, dental and hearing problems, as well as counteracting psychological issues for the child and family.
