Covariation Between Palatal Shape and Craniofacial Morphology in Complete Unilateral Cleft Lip, Alveolus, and Palate: A Geometric Morphometric Study.

Background/

Objectives

Unilateral cleft lip, alveolus, and palate (UCLAP) is associated with disturbed maxillary and craniofacial growth, and palatal morphology may reflect congenital, growth-related, surgical, and orthodontic influences. This retrospective study used geometric morphometrics to investigate covariation between palatal and craniofacial morphology in children treated for complete UCLAP.

Methods

Maxillary dental casts and lateral cephalometric radiographs of 48 non-syndromic patients (33 boys, 15 girls; mean age 9.9 years) were digitized using 239 palatal and 152 craniofacial landmarks and semilandmarks. Covariation was assessed by two-block partial least squares (PLS) analysis with permutation testing.

Results

Overall covariation was not statistically significant (RV = 0.254, p = 0.097). PLS1 accounted for 28.9% of total squared covariance and had a block-score correlation of r = 0.658 (p = 0.084). Bootstrap resampling showed only partial reproducibility of the PLS1 directions.

Conclusions

Palatal morphology does not appear to reliably reflect the overall craniofacial configuration in children with operated complete UCLAP. Further longitudinal studies using fully three-dimensional assessment are needed to clarify clinically meaningful palate-craniofacial relationships.