Give HK Cleft Lip and Palate Families a Smile

HKACLP organized ‘Medical Symposium on Reconstructive Surgeries for Cleft and Craniofacial Anomalies’

 HKACLP held ‘Medical Symposium on Reconstructive Surgeries for Cleft and Craniofacial Anomalies’ at the lecture hall of the Hong Kong Space Museum in the afternoon on 25.6.2023.  Five plastic & reconstructive surgeons were invited to give lecture on 5 topics namely: Surgical Repair for Unilateral Cleft Lip and Macrostomia, Bilateral Cleft Lip Repair & Nose Revision, Surgical Repair for Complete and Incomplete Cleft Palate, Secondary Lip and Nose Revisions for Children and Adult Patients, as well as Auricular Reconstruction for Microtia.

In the middle of event, Mrs Chan shared how non-surgical lip & nose revision helped to reduce the severity of her 3-month-old son’s initial cleft lip and nasal deformity that consequently facilitated surgical repair to achieve a better result.  Followed by Mrs. Lau who shared how early orthodontic treatment corrected her 14-year-old son’s underbite problem.

 After giving the lectures, the five doctors answered the parents’ questions one by one.  There were 120 people attending the educational event which benefited everyone a lot.

Quality reconstructive surgeries may change the patients’lives by bringing to them normal faces.  HKACLP holds regularly medical symposium in order to broaden the parents’ knowledge on cleft treatment, so that they may be able to choose the most appropriate treatment services for their children.

HKACLP reminds parents to pay extra care when using thickened & lengthened nasal splints together with punched tape

From time to time, HKACLP receives reports from parents that the thickened & lengthened nasal splints, provided by a public hospital for cleft lip & palate babies’ application after cleft lip repair, may cause hazard.  It is because this type of nasal splints must be covered by a punched tape to prevent it from falling off.  However, the tape may become loosen after a short time and thus the nasal splint may easily drop into the mouth of the babies and get struck in the throat, posing a risk of suffocation.

In view of this, HKACLP has inserted a warning notice in Newsletter No. 96 as well as the coming issues to remind the parents paying extra attention to nasal splints safety, and advise parents avoid applying this type of nasal splints to their babies because if the above incident occur, the consequences will be dreadful.

Helping Adult Cleft Lip & Palate Patients

HKACLP endeavours to help adult patients recover.  Here below is one of the cases.

An adult patient turned to HKACLP for help.  She was born with unilateral cleft lip and cleft palate in mainland China.  She received cleft lip and cleft palate surgical repairs at 3 and 8 years of age respectively.  After that, she moved to Hong Kong.  In 2014, she was referred to the Cleft Lip and Palate Team of a public hospital for treatment.  Then she underwent a nasal surgery performed by the otolaryngologist who inserted by then prosthetic implant and also rib cartilage graft to correct her flat and flared affected nostril.  Shortly after the operation, her wound got infection and she needed immediate surgery to remove the prosthetic implant.  After that, the doctor gave her hyaluronic acid injections as a substitute.  However, after several injections, she had rhinitis again, so the injection was stopped.  Up till now, she still needs to attend follow-up consultations, however no more treatment was rendered to her.  Her nasal shape and condition is regarded as good.  But in fact, she always has nasal congestion and rhinitis.  Until now, when she eats, the food juice will go up into her nose which makes her feel very uncomfortable and this problem also causes frequent rhinitis.  So she sought help from HKACLP in early 2023 with a hope that all her problems would be corrected and solved soon!

In fact, hyaluronic acid injections only provides short-term results, it is not a cure for her problem. The patient is facing a complex problem that cannot be solved by simply offering nasal surgery, otherwise the rhinitis problem will reoccur repeatedly.  The patient has never been given alveolar bone grafting surgery and thus there is an oronasal fistula in her mouth. That is the reason for food juice to flow up into her nasal cavity and causing rhinitis again and again.  Moreover, after the previous nose surgery, her affected nostril still flat and flared while nasal base was sunken. What is more, due to too short the soft palate, she has severe nasal speech and she may choke easily when drinking water.  Overall, she needs soft palate surgery, alveolar bone grafting and closure of oronasal fistula, follows by lip and nose revision surgery.   She needs appropriate treatments one by one to solve her problems from the root so that her lip nose appearance and function may become normal.  With the help of HKACLP, she received alveolar bone grafting, closure of oronasal fistula and palate repair in November 2023.  She will receive lip and nose revision surgery a few months later.

Links:

• HKACLP Official Website