Two groups of nine-year-old children were examined for orthodontic problems using a Severity Index. Patients who had been referred by general dental practitioners to a Consultant Orthodontist had significantly more occlusal problems than the controls. Seventy-one per cent of the referred patients were assessed as needing immediate treatment. The results of this study cast doubt upon the need for routine screening of nine-year-olds in an area where the general dental service is efficiently run and has good liaison with the District Hospital.

Child↗

PubMed1978

A rapid method of measuring the palatal surface area of cleft palate infants.

A method is described for rapidly measuring the surface area of the palate by adapting a piece of soft plastic to a model of the upper jaw using a vacuum moulding technique. Tests with a hemisphere of known surface area showed the method to be consistent and to have a low degree of systematic error. When measuring models with unrepaired cleft palates, the error was found to be 2.1 per cent (compared with 3 per cent using stereophotogrammetry) but 7.1 percent when measuring intact palates. Because of the consistency of the method, the true palatal area could be calculated from the measured area by the use of a multiplying factor. These findings are described, and the application of the technique to the pretreatment assessment of cleft cases is illustrated by showing that, in a series of 30 cleft palate and 30 normal infants, a tissue deficiency of 16.8 per cent existed in the cleft subjects at birth.

Cleft Palate↗

PubMed1977

Growth defects in unrepaired unilateral cleft lip and palate.

The positional relationships of the dentoalveolar segments in ten subjects with unrepaired unilateral complete clefts of lip and palate were studied in order to assess the effects of the cleft malformation on dentoalveolar growth. The findings suggest that there are localized growth defects, particularly in lateral and vertical growth at the region of the alveolar cleft, which cannot be accounted for by operative trauma. The position and shape of the central incisor nearest the cleft was also found to be defective in some subjects.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1977