Epidemiology of Oral Clefts: An International Perspective

Abstract

Abstract Cleft lip with or without cleft palate (CUP) and isolated cleft palate (CP) are serious birth defects, which on a worldwide level affect approximately 1 in every 600 newborn babies. This means that assuming a global birth rate of 15,000 children per hour (United States Bureau of the Census, new.html, 2001), a child with a cleft is born somewhere in the world every 2.5 min. From birth to maturity, children with oral clefts (OCs) undergo multidisciplinary surgical and nonsurgical treatment with considerable disruption to their lives and often adverse psychological consequences to themselves and their families. Efforts over the years have been made to record the frequency of birth defects, and accurate data on epidemiology are important for documenting the burden in relation to the planning of public health services. They also form the basis for research into causes. The eventual objective must be, from both scientific and humanitarian viewpoints, to advance the knowledge and understanding of causative factors and to institute primary preventive measures. Among the barriers to achieving this objective are (1) the heterogeneity of OCs, (2) the lack of standard criteria for the collection of data, and (3) the lack of and/or failure to apply an internationally comparable OC classification.