By By TK Ng | Adminstration Officer
Providing information of Craniofacial Centers Abroad
For cleft anomalies, medicine is not required. Instead, the patients need to undergo a few surgeries including primary lip and palate repairs, alveolar bone graft, jaw surgeries and secondary lip & nose revisions. Besides, the patients may also need speech therapy, regular dental care, ENT follow-ups and orthodontics.
The treatment of cleft lip and palate is complicated which involves several specialties and there are two phases of treatment, i.e. namely the primary and the secondary one, which altogether lasts for more than twenty years, starting from infancy to adulthood. Thus the patients have to attend incessant follow up consultations then they can receive the entire course of treatment.
However, since mid of the year 2020, quite a number of our member families are planning for migration to other countries in a short span of time. To migrate to an utterly new place, the parents have to struggle with living places, language, schools, jobs, integration into the society...
To give a hand to these parents and to ensure that CLP children receive continuous treatment in the new living place, HKACLP provides to the parents, contact details of the Craniofacial Centers of the most popular countries for migration, namely the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the United States so that they can seek for the right hospitals to continue their CLP children’s cleft treatment without a break or delay.
Zoom Workshops for Dental Hygiene
CLP patients may have dental problems liked misplaced teeth, missing teeth, and extra teeth erupting behind normal teeth. Their teeth are generally hypoplastic and of unideal quality, making the teeth more likely to decay. As cleft lip and palate can make oral hygiene more difficult, there is an increased rate of cavities. In addition, insufficient growth of upper jaw may result in underbite which in turn can affect the patient's speech. Therefore,dental dygiene is very important to CLP children.
HKACLP and the students of HKU Higher Diploma in Dental Hygiene organized Dental Hygiene Zoom Workshops for the children who are participating HKACLP’s Early Orthodontic Treatment Project, having orthodontics at Chai Wan Baptist Church Dental Clinic. Through the workshops, we hope to guide CLP children the correct ways of maintain their dental hygiene so that their orthodontic treatment may not be forced to stop due to gum inflammation, periodontal disease, dental decay…And most of all, they can enjoy health teeth during their life time.
Adults’ Consultation for Secondary Treatment
As the patients are growing up, their secondary cleft lip and nose facial problems, such asymmetric & collapsed nostrils, insufficient longitude & latitude of upper lip etc. are more apparent which make them feel embarrassed and find it difficult to integrate into the society. They are desperately in need for secondary revision surgeries to improve lip & nose function & appearance, speech, eating and social life.
Since every patient's cleft condition is unique, HKACLP gives suggestions for different treatments on individual cases so as to help the patients seek for due surgical revisions. Besides, the association provides information on pre-surgery preparation, post-operative care as well as follow-up treatments details helping the patients to have full rehabilitation.
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