Dentocraniofacial morphology in parents of children with cleft lip and/or palate

Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare the dentocraniofacial morphology of parents of children with cleft lip and/or palate (CUP) with that of parents of children without CUP and to use the results for genetic counseling, Participants: Twenty-five fathers and 40 mothers of Japanese children with CUP, who also had relatives with CUP within three generations (experimental group), and 413 pairs of parents of children without CUP (control) were used in this study, To test the accuracy of the discriminant function, 165 subjects were added to this study (test group), Materials and Methods: Sixty-five dental casts were measured by digital sliding calipers, and 1056 frontal and 1056 lateral cephalograms were traced, digitized, and analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and discriminant analysis, Results: Mesiodistal tooth diameters in parents of children with CUP did not show any differences from those in parents of children without CUP, The parents in the experimental group showed a distinct craniofacial morphology: wider interorbital width (IO-IO'), intercoronoid process distance (Cp-Cp'), and nasal cavity width (NC-NC') and larger anterior cranial base length (S-N) and cranial base length (N-Ba), For genetic counseling, a discriminant function was obtained using four significant ratios on ANOVA, The percentage of correct classification using this function on the pooled experimental and control subjects was 67.9. Conclusion: The parents in the experimental group showed a special craniofacial morphology, but the results suggest that the discriminant function might not be helpful in genetic counseling.