Palatal push-back operations are the most popular technique for palatoplasty. However, mucoperiosteal defects of the hard palate after palatoplasty can cause scar contraction, which leads to poor growth of the maxilla. Therefore, various artificial and biological materials have been used to cover mucoperiosteal defects.
The authors report on five patients who received grafts of cultured oral mucosal epithelium for mucoperiosteal defects. Clefts of the soft and hard palate were present in three patients, and a cleft of the soft palate was present in two patients. The average age of the patients was 1 year 4 months. Palatoplasty was done by push-back operation. Oral mucosalepithelial cells were obtained from patients who underwent extraction of their wisdom teeth or installation osseointegrated implants and were cultured by the methods of Green et al. and Hata et al. using 3T3 cells as the feeder layer. After 3 weeks, cultured oral mucosal epithelium was prepared. The, cultured oral mucosal epithelium was grafted on a raw surface after palatoplasty, with a chitin sheet as a carrier.
In all patients, the grafted areas underwent re-epithelialization after about 1 week.
