Case report: surgeon and orthodontist work together from patient's birth.

This case report presents one of the initial participants of a new treatment protocol started in 1965 for children born with complete clefts of the lip, alveolus, and palate at Children's Memorial Hospital, Chicago, USA. The surgeon and orthodontist worked together and in tandem from the time of the patient's birth. The protocol involves lip and palate closure, along with the placement of a passive maxillary prosthesis and minimal primary osteoplasty to the alveolus to help stabilize the maxillary segments.

A long-term retrospective outcome assessment of facial growth, secondary surgical need, and maxillary lateral incisor status in a surgical-orthodontic protocol for complete clefts.

In 1965, the cleft palate team at Children's Memorial Hospital embarked on a new surgical-orthodontic protocol in the habilitation of newborn complete cleft lip and palate cases. It brought the orthodontic effort into focus at birth and in planned sequence to correspond with the surgical procedures of lip closure, maxillary alveolar stabilization by means of an autogenous graft of the authors' design, and complete palate closure, all within the first year of life. The purpose of this investigation is threefold: first, to review the authors' previous publications and assess growth, secondary surgical need, and lateral incisor status of teeth adjacent to the cleft in a series of patients who have all followed a precise, early surgical/orthodontic protocol; second, to compare these cases with other collaborative studies wherein this protocol was not used; and third, to report on an additional 82 cases with regard to secondary surgical need and the status of teeth adjacent to the cleft.