The majority of articles (76) were published in the Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Journal, with an increase in articles during the 1990s and 2000. Information about measures or variables was clearly given in all articles. However, the review raises several major concerns regarding method for collection and documentation of data and method for measurement. The most distressing findings were the use of a cross-sectional design in studies of few patients with large age ranges and different types of clefts, the use of highly variable speech samples, and the lack of information about listeners and on reliability. It is hoped that ongoing national and international collaborative efforts to standardize procedures for collection and analysis of perceptual data will help to eliminate such concerns and thus make comparison of published results possible in the future.

Important aspects of palliative home care as providing a secure base were identified and these have implications for clinical practice.

No abstract

Palliative care does not end with the death of the patient, and many palliative care services offer specific follow-up services for the bereaved. The aims of this study were to quantitate perceived bereavement needs and to qualitatively describe these needs. The study design was cross-sectional and targeted family members three to nine months after the patient's death. Two hundred and forty-eight family members responded (response rate 66%) to a postal questionnaire with Likert-type and open-ended questions. The responses to the open-ended items were analyzed with manifest content analysis, and the quantitative part was analyzed with descriptive statistics. The analysis showed that about half of the family members expressed a need for bereavement follow-up. A majority favored a personal meeting, preferably in their own home, with the staff member who had had the most contact with the patient and the family. The family members wanted to talk about what had happened during the palliative phase (e.g., if the patient had suffered or not), and also about their present situation, their feelings of loneliness, and the future. The follow-up procedure made the family member experience a feeling of being recognized as a person with their own needs and was also valuable with regard to the family members' feelings of guilt. The findings are discussed in relation to narrative theory, meaning-based coping, and the dual process model of coping with bereavement, and designing follow-up procedures.

As a group, children born with UCLP displayed deviant phonology at 3 years compared with peers without cleft lip and palate. Measures of oral consonant and stop production at 18 months might be possible predictors for phonology at 3 years in children born with cleft palate.