Team Care is Preferred Approach for Cleft Palate Treatment

A survey of 253 mothers whose children have orofacial cleft shows that care given by an individual provider is far less desirable than care provided by a team approach. The study defined a team as consisting of a dental professional, speech professional and a surgeon. Mothers living in Arkansas, Iowa and New York selected for the study reported they felt a team-based approach was better at delivering recommended care to their children. While the study discovered that mothers were largely satisfied with the children’s surgical care needs, they considered the attention to their children’s dental needs lacking.

Lower marks were also given to individual providers than team-based care with respect to providing noncleft-related medical care. Furthermore, the mothers included in the survey reported they found hearing tests, a dental visit or genetic counseling were less likely to be provided by individual care providers.

The study was led by April A. Austin, MS, a research scientist at the New York State Department of Health, and Charlotte Druschel, MD, MPH, medical director for the Congenital Malformations Registry with the New York State Department of Health.

The survey also asked questions that shed light on the impact of prenatal diagnosis. The study concluded that a prenatal diagnosis of orofacial cleft had little effect on how mothers ranked the children’s care. Despite the low marks mothers gave to individual providers for cleft care, the perceptions the women held about quality of care for overall health, facial appearance and speech were not impacted by whether the care was delivered by a team or individual.

Children who had more serious cleft conditions were more likely to have received care via a team approach, the study revealed. That finding is supported by a statistic from the survey that shows 86 percent of children who had both cleft lip and cleft palate were enrolled in team care.