[Median cleft of the upper lip. Apropos of 3 cases. The Association for the Study of Facial Clefts].

The authors report three cases of Median Cleft of the upper lip, a clinical entity really deserving the term of "hare lip", a very ancient denomination who dates back to the Tang Dynasty and unfairly used to describe the usual lateral clefts of the lip. The denominations of "true" and "false" median cleft lips recovering respectively such different embryopathic realities as clefts of the median element with varying degrees of vertical separation and as agenesis of the fronto-nasal process accompanied with cerebral anomalies are no more used now. Median clefts of the upper lip can be included in the "neurocristopathies" by less or more precocious dysneurulation of the fronto-nasal process creating anomalies from various single midline defects of the upper lip of our three cases, to associated midline defects like in the Median Cleft face syndrome (fronto-nasal dysplasia) described by De Myer and Sedano to holoprosencephaly (arhinencephaly), which are rarely associated.