All children with complete unilateral cleft lip and palate will develop some degree of malocclusion regardless whether the alveolar cleft is repaired primarily or bone grafting is deferred. To evaluate the impact of early gingivoperiosteoplasty on occlusal relationships, dental models were obtained in 5-year-old patients who underwent early cleft lip and palate repair with primary boneless bone grafting (Skoog's method) (56 children) and without alveolar intervention (51 children). The Goslon's occlusion grading system was applied to evaluate occlusal relationships in both groups. Patients with early surgical intervention to repair alveolar cleft demonstrated poor occlusal relationship with the Goslon score 4 and 5, which will likely need an orthognathic corrective procedure (50% vs. 19.6% in patients without early primary dissection of the alveolar process). Results reaffirm that an inclusion of the alveolar process into the early primary lip repair adds to the severity of occlusal maldevelopment.
Objectives
This retrospective cross-sectional study aimed to present a new method for secondary alveolar bone grafting (SABG) assessment and to qualitatively evaluate the SABG results in unilateral cleft lip and palate patients.
Materials and methods
Research was conducted according to the STROBE guidelines. The study group consisted of 21 patients with a mean age of 16 years. High-resolution cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) was performed at least 1 year after grafting. The experimental side was the cleft side, and the contralateral side without a congenital cleft was the control. Measurements were performed at four levels of the maxillary central incisors’ roots according to the new scale with scores from 0 to 3. The sum of the scores provided a general assessment of bone architecture. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used for intergroup comparisons, and a Kappa coefficient was used for reproducibility measurements.
Results
High individual variability was found, and the bone architecture was significantly worse on the cleft side than on the noncleft side. The results showed 28.57% failure, 33.33% poor, 19.05% moderate, and 19.05% good results from the surgical procedure. Kappa coefficients produced results from 0.92 to 1.00 for intra-rater and from 0.81 to 1.00 for inter-rater reproducibility.
Conclusions
CBCT provides detailed information about alveolar bone morphology. The new assessment method is useful at every treatment stage and provides excellent repeatability. SABG did not provide good bone morphology, in most cases.
Clinical relevance
This research presents a new universal alternative for the assessment of SABG by utilizing CBCT.
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