[Principles of treatment of total unilateral cleft lip and palate. Suggested protocol].

Complete uni-lateral cleft palates resulting from failed union between internal and external nasal buds cause an imbalance of both superficial and deep nasal structures. After summarizing the principles that should guide the care of these anomalies, the authors present their therapeutic procedure, in which orthopaedic and surgical treatments are intimately associated. They conclude their presentation by emphasizing the difficulty of predicting the definitive result because of the extreme diversity of the sequellae that always accompany the treatment of cleft palates.

[Orthopedic treatment of labio-maxillo-palatal clefts: our approach].

Many authors use a preliminary orthopedic procedure before cleft lip and palate surgical closure in order to prevent possible bone distortion following the rupture of the muscle belts resulting from the cleft. Actually, this is generally not only an orthopedic treatment but rather a surgical orthopedic step which includes lip adhesion before the surgical closure of the clefts. Following the procedures proposed by Georgiade and Latham, we have used since 1996 a treatment based on traction applied with an elastic chain on splints attached by transmaxillary pins for certain types of clefts, namely unilateral complete clefts with endognathy of the small fragment, unilateral complete clefts larger than 7 mm, bilateral wide complete clefts with premaxilla protrusion, and bilateral wide complete clefts with collapsus and premaxillary protrusion.