Comparative study of the extent of palatal lengthening by different methods

Palatal lengthening is often emphasized in performing palatoplasty. However, definitive data regarding the method of measuring palatal length and the extent of palatal lengthening expressed quantitatively have not been reported. The authors have devised an easy method of measuring palatal length that can be expressed quantitatively, and they examined the characteristics of various methods of palatoplasty that are presently used commonly. A paper ruler was used to measure both a straight-line and a curved distance while the patient was under general anesthesia before and immediately after the palatoplasty. According to this study, the straight-line distance was lengthened to a significantly greater degree than the curved distance was after pushback palatoplasty for incomplete types of cleft palate and two-flap palatoplasty for complete types. Furlow double-opposing Z-palatoplasty and two-flap palatoplasty appeared to allow for greater palatal lengthening than the pushback palatoplasty. Further investigations will be undertaken to determine the correlation between the extent of palatal lengthening and speech development.