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Objective: To examine skeletal morphology and dental arch relationships at 8 years of age following early 2-stage palatoplasty, which consists of soft palate plasty at 1 year of age and hard palate closure at 1.5 years of age, and to compare the results with those of conventional pushback palatoplasty., Design: Retrospective., Setting: Single institutional study., Patients: Eighty-six patients with nonsyndromic complete unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP) were selected., Intervention: The subjects were divided into 2 groups according to the palatoplasty protocols, as follows: 45 patients, who underwent early 2-stage palatoplasty (ETS group), and 41 patients, who underwent 1-stage pushback palatoplasty (PB group)., Main Outcome Measures: Skeletal morphology was assessed using lateral cephalometric analysis, and dental arch relationships were examined using the GOSLON yardstick., Results: Cephalometric analysis revealed that the anterior-posterior length of the maxilla, measured by PTM-A and PTM-ANS, both projected to the nasal floor (NF) plane, was longer in the ETS group than in the PB group (PTM-A/NF, p  = .04; PTM-ANS/NF, p  = .03, unpaired t -test), although no significant difference was observed in SNA ( p  = .09, unpaired t -test). Upper posterior facial height was shorter in the ETS group than in the PB group ( p  = .02, unpaired t ). Assessments with the GOSLON yardstick showed that the ETS group presented better dental arch relationships than the PB group ( p  = 0.04, Mann-Whitney's U -test)., Conclusions: The present results suggested that the ETS protocol reduced the negative effects of palatal surgery on facial development and dental arch relationships in patients with complete UCLP at 8 years of age., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Objective: This study aims to assess occlusal relationships and frequency of oronasal fistula at 5 years of age following 2 hard palate closure techniques and to compare results., Design: Retrospective longitudinal study., Setting: Institutional study., Patients: Study patients included 57 patients with nonsyndromic complete unilateral cleft lip and palate who were consecutively treated. All patients underwent our early 2-stage protocol for palatoplasty, which consisted of soft palate plasty at 1 year of age and hard palate closure at 1.5 years of age. Twenty-nine patients underwent hard palate closure using vestibular flap (VF group) technique (2009-2011) and 28 patients underwent conventional hard palate closure with local palatal flap (LPF group) technique (2006-2008)., Main Outcome Measures: Occlusal relationships were assessed with 5-year-olds' index, and frequency of oronasal fistula was investigated., Results: Average 5-year-olds' index scores for VF and LPF groups were 3.11 and 3.57, respectively ( P < .001). Oronasal fistula occurred in approximately 7% of patients in the VF group and in 18% of patients in the LPF group., Conclusion: Hard palate closure with VF technique may provide better occlusal relationships at 5 years of age than does conventional local closure with the LPF.