KOTA KINABALU: There are between 100 and 150 new cases of patients suffering from cleft in Sabah annually.
According to Mr John Ranjit, a plastic and re-constructive surgeon now based at the Sarawak General Hospital but was previously working in Sabah, between 70 and 80 cases were registered here alone.
Cleft is a split or separation in the structure of the lip or the roof of the mouth.
Ranjit said that there were many fallacies surrounding the causes of clefts in some babies and stressed that it was no one’s fault.
He advised against playing the ‘blame game’ as the condition is neither caused by something the husband nor wife did.
“There are various reasons behind. .. hereditary is a factor, then there is the environment factor as well as sporadic factor,” he said.
He urged parents with cleft-lip and palate children to continue with the follow-up treatment and to regularly meet with their child’s speech therapists as this will help in their child’s speech development.
“The child will learn to talk properly … I also urge them to raise their child to be confident and they have a tremendous task ahead of them. The treatment for a cleft-lip and palate child is lifelong and involves multi-stages,” he said.
The treatment guideline plans for a cleft child are lip repair for children between one month and three months old, palate repair for those who are nine months and up to 12 months old, hearing assessment for those from one year old to two years old, speech assessment (three years old to four years old), orthodontics (eight years old to 10 years old), alveolar bone grafting (nine years old to 12 years old), orthodontics follow-up (13 years old to 17 years old) and finally, for those 18 years old and older, jaw surgery, if needed.
Likas Hospital paediatrician Dr Leong Kei Joe said that in Malaysia, one out of 600 to 700 people in the country suffered from cleft-lip or palate.
The ratio was the same for Sabah.
Leong added that Hospital Likas organises a ‘cleft clinic’ once a month to help patients.
He also said that a study conducted at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital 1 found that there were 162 new cases of cleft at the hospital between 2011 and 2012.