Guidelines and recommendations for studies on psychosocial aspects of patients with craniofacial anomalies.

In recent years there has been a few numbers of studies on psychosocial aspects of patients with craniofacial anomalies in the world. Current research surrounding psychological aspects of craniofacial anomalies suffers from various inconsistencies as reported by the results which may be due to differences in methodology that has made interpretation of findings very difficult. This article aims to present an evaluation of methodological errors and inconsistent findings in such studies. A thorough search based on electronic data base was done utilizing the following words: "craniofacial anomalies", "psychosocial impact". The resultant studies were evaluated based on the methodology and various lacunae, pitfalls were summed up. The results indicated that most of the studies suffer from various methodological errors. Several guidelines were fabricated so as to minimize error and maximize accuracy. The authors recommend these guidelines for future research design of studies related to psychosocial aspects of patients with craniofacial anomalies.