Oskana Jackson, MD: Cleft lip and palate is the most common congenital facial anomaly. It occurs in about 1 in 800 births.

Meg Ann Maguire, RN: Celfting occurs at about the 6 to8 week point of pregnancy. The neural tube, which becomes the spinal cord, develops and the face forms in arches as it comes around. But sometimes an error happens, and in this case may result in a cleft lip. A cleft in an incomplete fusion of any type of anatomical structure.

Oskana Jackson, MD: There’s a spectrum in the severity of a cleft. You can have a cleft lip on one side, you can have it on both sides. It can involve only part of the lip, which we call incomplete,  or it can involve the entire lip and extend into the floor of the nose. And we call that a complete cleft. It can also extend even further through the palate. And we call that a complete cleft lip and palate. The kids may look a little different, but they’re still normal kids.

Jesse Taylor, MD: The overwhelming majority of our patients lead very healthy, very, really normal lives.

Female: So we’re just going to go down this hallway.

Oskana Jackson, MD: Cleft palate alone is typically not diagnosed until after birth. But more and more cleft lip is diagnosed prenatally. It can be seen on an ultrasound at 20 weeks.

Nahla Khalek, MD, MPH: It’s always coming off the experience of their ultrasounds, wanting to figure out if it’s a boy or if it’s a girl.

Is this your first pregnancy?

Female: No, my second.

Nahla Khalek, MD, MPH: That initial hope, excitement and joy then gets replaced with anxiety and fear about the future for their unborn child. But can manage to kind of bring them back to that place of hope and joy.

There is a huge, huge improvement in a cosmetic outcome. Which I know is…

Oskana Jackson, MD: And we tell them what to expect, and briefly about cleft lip and palate care.

Nahla Khalek, MD, MPH: We then perform our own series of imaging studies.

Again, this is a 3D rendering. So typically…

High resolution ultrasound, 3D ultrasound, 4D ultrasound. We sit down with the family, review the data.

Oskana Jackson, MD: We found that meeting families prenatally really helps educate them. And helps them understand so that they are a little better prepared. And we can take it from there.

Jesse Taylor, MD: The doctor is gonna treat each patient through to maturity. Which I think is a really nice thing for families. You get to develop a really deep relationship with each other.  In the grand scheme of life, and everything that’s going to happen to him, this is one of the most important things.

Oskana Jackson, MD: So we may meet our new patients as infants, shortly after birth, but we continue to see them on a regular basis all the way through high school and even beyond.

Jesse Taylor, MD: Our cleft lip and palate team sees about 700 to 800 patients each year.

Oskana Jackson, MD: And we perform over 1,000 surgical procedures related to cleft lip and palate each year. We are a very high volume cleft center. And what this means for patients coming to see us is that we have experience in all the nuances of cleft lip and palate care, from the initial repairs, to secondary procedures, to routine, regular care throughout childhood and adolescence.

Jesse Taylor, MD: And so when someone comes to see me or one of my colleagues, they’re getting somebody who’s doing this day in and day out.

Cynthia Solot, MA, CCC/SLP: People come here from all over the country, they come here from all over the world.

Meg Ann Maguire, RN: What makes our team special is not only the fact that we have amazing surgeons, but their dedication to their patients.

Jennifer Len (parent): And it just was very comforting knowing that you’re tiny, tiny little baby is going to be placed in her arms to have something very serious done to him. I would tell other parents to come to CHOP because there’s no better place. It’s been a wonderful place.