Child development skills and language in toddlers with cleft lip and palate

Abstract Introduction Children born with cleft lip and palate (CLP) are exposed to several risk factors for developmental delay. Methods This cross-sectional and descriptive study compared the performance of gross motor, adaptive fine motor, social-personal and language skills in children with non-syndromic cleft lip and palate (age = 36–47 months, n = 30) matched as to chronological age and gender. The evaluation instruments were Denver Developmental Screening Test II and MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory – part D, employed for the receptive and expressive vocabulary checklist. Intergroup comparisons were performed using t tests and Chi-square tests. The Pearson correlation coefficient was used to verify the inter-category correlation (p ≤ 0.05). Results There was statistically significant difference in gross motor, adaptive fine motor, and language skills, both in receptive and expressive aspects, in the comparison between groups. In the personal-social area, children with CLP presented performance below the expected, without statistically significant difference between groups. Conclusions Children with CLP are at risk for developmental disorders and should be monitored from early childhood to minimize the deleterious effects of this risk condition.