Long-term growth patterns in children born with cleft lip and/or palate. A systematic review

in children with cleft lip and/or palate nutritional status and growth may be impaired due to early life feeding difficulties.OBJECTIVEto review the existing literature on the nutritional prognosis during childhood of patients undergoing surgery for cleft lip and/or palate (CLP), their body composition and growth patterns from 2 to 10 years of age, and the possible effects of their early nutritional status on the long-term onset of overweight.METHODSa systematic search of growth and body composition parameters in 2-10 year-old CLP children, including cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, and using the Pubmed and Scopus databases. From the 2,983 retrieved articles, 6 were finally included.RESULTStwo studies out of 6 were longitudinal and the other 4 were cross-sectional, including very heterogeneous samples. Weight and height were used as growth parameters in 2 studies; 2 studies used body mass index (BMI); and the remaining 2 used indexes of nutritional status derived from anthropometric measures. The studies showed discrepancies among results: 3 of them found growth differences between children with CLP and their counterparts, whereas the other 3 did not. The two longitudinal studies did not show any significant differences between the mean BMI z-scores or growth curves of cleft patients and their counterparts. When differences existed, the most affected group was that under 5 years, syndromic children, and adopted children with CL/P.CONCLUSIONSthe literature is scarce comparing growth patterns between children with CLP and controls, and results cannot confirm that children with CLP aged 2-10 years, excluding those with syndromes or belonging to vulnerable populations, have different growth patterns or a worse nutritional status than their counterparts.