Patients with oro-facial clefts have more dental anomalies.

DATA SOURCES: Medline, BIRME, OVID, Embase reviews and the Cochrane Library. Additional articles of potential relevance were identified by manual searches.

STUDY SELECTION: Observational controlled studies with non-syndromic forms of oral clefts matched for dental anomalies in primary and/or permanent teeth. There were no language restrictions.

DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Two authors reviewed all abstracts independently, compared results and reached consensus on inclusion/exclusion. Authors of the included studies were contacted for missing, relevant data. Quality assessment of the studies was carried out using a modified version of the Loney scoring system.

RESULTS

There were six studies selected for inclusion, none of which assessed as being at low risk of bias; four were rated as having moderate risk of bias and two at high risk of bias. The dental anomalies were collected into three distinct subgroups. Not all studies included each of the subgroups in their data collection: tooth agenesis was recorded in five studies with 1880 participants; supernumerary teeth in three studies with 1342 participants; and morphologic irregularities in four studies with 1502 participants. There were significant associations between patients with isolated oral clefts and tooth agenesis (OR = 12.31; 95% CI 3.75-40.36), presence of supernumerary teeth (OR = 4.99; 95% CI 2.58-9.64) and morphologic irregularities (OR = 5.69; 95% CI 3.96-8.19).

CONCLUSIONS

The evidence suggests that individuals who are born with isolated oral clefts are more likely to have dental anomalies in the permanent dentition than those with no oral clefts.