Abstract
One of the important aims of secondary bone grafting in cleft patients is to provide a more ideal dental arch form orthodontically without any prosthesis. The purpose of this study was to determine the optimum time for secondary bone grafting from the view point of orthodontic dental rehabilitation.
The relationship between the time for operation and the effects of subsequent orthodontic treatment on the alignment of the teeth adjacent to the cleft and the gap of the dental arch was investigated in 26 unilateral cleft lip and palate cases. In all cases, the canines were aligned to the adjacent central incisor on the cleft side.
The results demonstrated that better prognosis is achieved if the bone graft is performed before the age of 11 years, before canine eruption, or the developmental stage of about one half the root length in the canine adjacent to the cleft. And this study also suggests two important points concerning the surgical procedure to obtain better prognosis:
1) to make wide graft bed.
2) to fill the graft bed completely with particulate marrow and cancellous bone.
