A detailed description of soft tissue morphology in unilateral cleft lip and palate cases--a study applying a new soft tissue analysis.

More than 1,500 CLP patients have been treated in Berne using a protocol which has always remained fundamentally the same. Even though--from birth to 20 years of age--the finest possible plastic surgery, orthodontics and prosthodontics were undertaken, the specialists involved considered that the patient, at the end of treatment, still possessed a CLP appearance to some extent. Neither the cephalometric analyses, nor the occlusal findings, however, provided any explanation for this, and a new method of soft tissue analysis was therefore developed to provide a detailed picture of the tissue overlying the skeletal profile.