Dental maturity in children with a complete bilateral cleft lip and palate

Objective: Dental age in children with a bilateral cleft lip and palate (BCLP) was assessed and compared with children without cleft.

Design: Dental age was estimated for 74 children with a complete BCLP (54 boys and 20 girls) from 364 orthopantomograms. Nonlinear regression curves were made between 5 and 14 years of age for boys and girls separately. A comparison was made with a sample of Dutch children (91 girls and 90 boys) without oral clefts for three different age groups, namely 5, 9.5, and 14 years of age.

Setting: Data collection was carried out at the Cleft Palate Center, University Medical Center Nijmegen (The Netherlands). A sample from the Nijmegen Growth Study was used as a normative sample.

Results: At 5 years of age, boys with a BCLP were significantly delayed in dental age compared to boys without cleft. After that age, no significant differences in dental age were found. For girls with a BCLP, no difference in dental age with the girls without cleft could be found.

Conclusion: Dental age in BCLP showed a tendency to be delayed at 5 years of age. At the ages of 9.5 and 14 years of age, no differences were found. Further investigation on the development of individual teeth is suggested to gain more insight into the origin of this delay.