Interdisciplinary Cleft Care

Book excerpt: Packed with original color illustrations and videos, Interdisciplinary Cleft Care: Global Perspectives draws from the rich national and international relationships between the Global Smile Foundation and world experts in cleft care to provide comprehensive, clear, and user-friendly content for all cleft care professionals. This text is designed to be an inclusive resource that addresses the educational needs of all cleft care providers, from novice learners looking to develop their area’s first multidisciplinary cleft team to seasoned specialists looking to improve their outcomes. While most other educational cleft care books on treatments and techniques are relevant in high-resource settings, they may not be applicable in low and middle-income countries where orofacial clefting is most common. Interdisciplinary Cleft Care: Global Perspectives details multiple treatment modalities and surgical techniques that can be applied in low, medium, and high-resource settings alike for all key challenges in cleft care. This book has a team-based framework with chapters that address pertinent topics in cleft care by national and international authorities on the subject from plastic surgery, facial plastic surgery, pediatric otolaryngology, oral maxillofacial surgery, speech-language pathology, dentistry, orthodontics, psychology, and more. This text also brings attention to special topics often ill addressed in traditional cleft care resources, including psychosocial issues, safety and preparedness in low-resource settings, and guidance for building a multidisciplinary cleft care team where needed. The book includes access to 60 high-quality surgical videos to support the techniques reviewed in the chapters.