Language Screening in Toddlers with Cleft Lips and or Palates: A Pilot Study

Children with cleft lips and or palates are at risk for speech and language disorders. Early speech and language intervention help them to advance their full speech and language abilities. This study aimed to determine whether language abilities in toddlers with oral clefts would differ from those of normal children.

The study recruited 2 groups of children aged 12 to 24 months. The toddlers with cleft lips and or palates as a group of children with orofacial anomalies were born at Shahid Akbar-Abadi Hospital from March 2017 to March 2019 in Tehran City, Iran. The parents of non cleft children and those with oral clefts answered the questions of the verbal and non-verbal communication screening checklist for Persian-speaking children.

The results showed significant differences between the scores of the receptive-expressive language achieved by toddlers with clefts and non-clefts peers aged 12-18 months (P<0.05) and 18-24 months (P<0.05). But the results showed no significant differences between the non cleft toddlers and those with clefts in non-verbal communication (P>0.05).

The toddlers with orofacial anomalies need early speech and language intervention.