Psychosocial Maternal Perception of the Outcome of Pre Surgical Infant Orthopedics in Infants Born with Cleft Lip and Palate

Background: The setback of having a child with cleft lip and palate deeply affects the parents psychology. The Pre Surgical Infant Orthopaedics(PSIO) is a promising procedure for improvement in facial morphology prior to primary lip repair. Objective: The current study examines the perception of effects of PSIO procedures on the facial appearance of newborns with cleft lip/palate by their mothers and finds its correlation if any, with the change in psychosocial status of the mothers. Study design: The mothers of 50 infants(0-6 months) born with cleft lip/palate rated the nasal morphology, extent of cleft defect and overall facial morphology on a Likert's scale before and after PSIO procedure. This was correlated with changes in mother's depression, anxiety and stress levels by using the validated Hindi-version of Depression Anxiety and Stress scale(DASS-42) index before and after PSIO. Results: The mothers reported a significant improvement in all the morphological parameters for their infants with PSIO which correlated well with significant reduction in the DASS scores from 22.54(severe) to 7.10(normal) for depression, 20.64(extremely severe) to 6.46(normal) for anxiety and 24.7(severe) to 8.4(normal) for stress. Conclusions: The changes in facial morphology by PSIO procedures are well perceived by mothers and significantly improves their depression, anxiety and stress levels.