3D longitudinal evaluation of dental arch in patients with unilateral cleft lip and palate

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate longitudinally the alterations of dental arch dimensions of children with cleft lip and palate, before and after primary plastic surgeries. The sample will be composed of 150 digital dental casts of 60 children, both genders, aged from 3-36 months, divided into two groups: children with complete unilateral cleft lip (Group 1) and children with complete unilateral cleft lip and palate (Group 2), obtained at pre-cheiloplasty (Phase 1), pre-palatoplasty (Phase 2), 1 year after palatoplasty (Phase 3). The dental casts will be scanned through Scanner 3Shape's R700TM software. The measurements will be executed through the stereophotogrammetry software at Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy. The following linear measurements will be obtained: intercanine distance, intertuberosity distance, anterior length, total length of the dental arch, and the dental arch area. An examiner previously trained and calibrated will perform the analyses. The method error will be evaluated by paired t-test and Dahlberg's formula. The intergroup comparison will be verified by independent t test and ANOVA followed by Tukey test. The level of significance of 5% will be adopted for statistically significant differences. (AU)