Repair of alveolar bone defect in a cleft lip and palate using premaxillary bone graft

Abstract

Oral clefts pose a growing public health problem on a global and national scale. Oral and Maxillofacial surgeons are increasingly likely to come across challenging orofacial clefts, especially complete bilateral cleft lip and palate in infancy. We present a case of bone harvest from a bulbous premaxilla for grafting an alveolar bone defect in an infant. The literature review discusses issues on alveolar defect, alveolar closure, time and types alveolar bone grafting. The purpose of this paper is to report an attempt at utilizing portions of a bulbous premaxilla to fill the alveolar defect at the time of cleft lip repair. The finding of this report is to encourage the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons to utilize the bones harvested from the premaxilla instead of choosing extra donor sites thereby reducing morbidity following grafting procedure.

Keywords: Alveolar bone, grafting, premaxilla