Orofacial Clefts and Dysphagia: A Closer Look.
In anatomical terms, cleft is an abnormal opening in the body. A cleft lip or palate means that either (or both) of the two have a hole where there shouldn’t be. The cleft can affect the upper lip, the nose, the hard palate and soft palate. The various orofacial clefts may cause swallowing problems in different phases of the swallow and different types of dysphagia: the cleft lip cause sucking problems in the preparatory phase, the cleft palate in the oral transitory phase, a