Objectives: (1) To collect three-dimensional, dynamic, facial images from two groups of infants. One group born with cleft lip and palate (CL/P) slated to have a primary lip repair; and a second, age-matched, non-cleft, control group of infants. (2) To develop analyses to determine differences in facial movement between infants with CL/P and non-cleft control infants, and to determine changes in facial movement before and after primary lip repair.
Design: Longitudinal, prospective, case-control study.
Setting: Facial Animation Laboratory at the University of North Carolina School of Dentistry.
Patients, Participants: Two groups of infants: one group with unrepaired CL/P slated to have primary lip repair (n=15), and a second group of age-matched, non-cleft, control infants (n=15).
Interventions: Movement testing before and four months after primary lip repair in infants with CL/P and at similar time-points in non-cleft infants.
Main Outcome Measure(s): Seven measures of facial movement.
Results: The range of facial movements increased by 15% over all infants during the 4-month period of time. Compared with non-cleft infants, infants with CL/P had (a) 47% less nasolabial movement, and this difference did not change due to the lip repair; (b) 3.6 times greater movement asymmetry that was reduced after lip repair to 1.9 times greater movement asymmetry; and (c) 74% greater lateral upper lip movement before lip repair which was almost entirely removed by the lip repair.
Conclusions: Primary surgical lip repair decreased hypermobility and improved asymmetry of upper lip movement.
Animations
Each movie shows three views of the subject. The middle view shows the
frontal aspect while the two side views are shown alongside. Note that
in the side views, the markers on the opposite side of the face are
not shown to avoid confusion. The initial frame of each seperate
motion has the markers labeled for reference. Head motion has been
filtered out using Procrustes methods as described in the paper.
For each of the six subjects, there are varying numbers of actions shown as the babies can only be observed and are difficult to prompt into performing a particular action.