Background
Cleft lip and palate is one of the commonest congenital anomalies, which have an impact on feeding, speech, and dental development away from the significant psychosocial sequel. Early surgical repair aims to restore appearance and function, and the modern techniques can leave many defects undetectable. Therefore, the anesthetic challenge facing the pediatric airway with such abnormalities is still of a great impact. The aim of our study among 189 patients enrolled is to correlate alveolar gap and maximum cleft width measurements as predictors of difficult laryngoscopy and intubation in infants with unilateral complete cleft lip/palate aging from 1 to 6 months. As a secondary outcome, their weight is to be correlated too as another parameter.
Results
The alveolar gap and maximum cleft width are both of equal high predictive power ( value ≤ 0.001) with 100% sensitivity for both and specificity of 76.10% and 82.39% respectively, with a cut off value of ≤ 10 mm and 11 mm for these dimensions respectively, and odds ratio of incidence of difficult intubation is 4.18 and 5.68 respectively, while body weight ≤ 5.75 kg has an odds ratio of 2.32.
Conclusion
Alveolar cleft and maximum cleft width can be used as predictors for anticipation of difficult laryngoscopy and intubation infant patients with unilateral complete cleft lip and palate, while body weight ≤ 5.75 kg increases the risk more than twice.