Congenital midline cervical cleft: a report of two cases.

Congenital midline cervical cleft is an uncommon malformation of the anterior neck. We report the cases of two patients with such an anomaly who had been born within 10 days of each other at a regional hospital in upstate New York. Fewer than 100 cases of congenital midline cervical cleft have been reported in the literature, and to the best of our knowledge, none of the other reported cases occurred so close to each other in terms of time and location. Diagnoses in both cases were established by clinical observation soon after birth. No likely epidemiologic commonalities between the two patients were found. Head and neck surgeons should be familiar with these malformations because early surgical excision is critical. Both of our patients were surgically treated at an early age, one with a Z-plasty and one with a straight closure. In both cases, the patients exhibited good functional and cosmetic results at 5 years of age.