Signs of Gingivitis in Individuals With Oral Clefts

Objectives: Oral clefts are craniofacial abnormalities with frequency ranging from 1 in every 500 to 1 in 1,000 live births each year. A person with cleft lip usually has a small notch on their lip, a complete split in the lip that goes all the way to the base of the nose while cleft palate can be one or both sides of the roof of the mouth and may go the full length of the palate. The Philippines has one of the highest frequencies worldwide. The overall purpose of our project is to determine oral health needs with individuals born with oral clefts and their families and the purpose of this work was to determine the frequency of signs of gingival inflammation in individuals who were born with cleft lip and palate abnormalities.
Methods: Six hundred and twenty-eight individuals from the Philippines were included in this study. The study participants from the Philippines were from modest socioeconomic backgrounds, with limited access to dental care and similar regional cultural influences. Out of the 628 study participants, 65 unrelated individuals with clefts were selected and their clinical information was compared to 48 unrelated unaffected individuals. Clinical signs of gingivitis were determined by clinical examination through visual inspection. Two unaffected individuals were completely edentulous and were excluded from further analysis.
Results: Out of the 65 individuals born with oral clefts, 50 had clinical signs of gingivitis. In contrast, 15 individuals not born with oral clefts out of 46 had clinical signs of gingivitis (p=0.000003).
Conclusions: People born with oral clefts have a higher risk of showing signs of gingivitis independent of socioeconomic background.