Our Child

What treatment will help our child?

The combined skills of various specialists will be used to treat your child’s condition.  The specialists on the cleft team will work with you to ensure that your baby receives the treatment he or she needs.

The specialists you see in the core team and who are most often at combined clinics may include Plastic Surgeons, Speech-Language Therapists, an Orthodontist, Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) Specialists, and Nurses.  Other specialists involved in your child’s care may include Dentists, Dieticians, Lactation Consultants and Oral Maxillofacial Surgeons.

The following headings cover the most commonly required treatments and topics of importance.  You may not require all of them, and some people will require additional procedures.  Remember that the treatment for each child is planned to suit individual needs. 

Fully repairing a cleft takes time, and the plan can change slightly as your child grows.  Try and focus on the immediate treatment, and wait to see how your child develops before thinking ahead.  Easier said than done, but it really helps with your ability to cope.

If you have looked on the internet, you will have noticed that timing of surgeries vary a little around the world.  You may be concerned about the reasons behind how they make this decision.  Generally in New Zealand, a cleft lip is repaired between 3-5 months of age and a cleft palate is repaired between 9-12 months of age.  This decision is based on a number of factors including:

• Size and general health of the baby for surgery.
• Repairs to match developmental needs of the child, ie the mouth being anatomically and physiologically correct before the child learns to talk (around 9 months of age)
• Individual experience and preference of the surgeons.
• Collective knowledge based on prior experience and international research.