A retrospective characterization study on patients with oral clefts in Medellín, Colombia, South America

introduction: the objective of this study was to make a clinical and epidemiological characterization of the patients with cleft lip and/or palate (clp) who consulted at the children？s hospital clínica noel foundation of medellín, colombia, south america, between 1985 and 2003. methods: 919 clinical records were evaluated for a descriptive, longitudinal, retrospective study. a univariate statistical analysis was used for the qualitative variables, and descriptive measures for the quantitative ones. a two-variate statistical analysis was performed in order to determine the association among the qualitative variables with a significance level of 5%. results: 50.3% of the cases were classified as unilateral and 19.8% as bilateral. among the unilateral ones, 59.0% were located at the left side and 41.3% at the right side. 3.4% presented cleft lip, 12.4% presented cleft palate, and 12.8% presented cleft soft palate. 1.2% of the sample did not present pathology classification. in terms of gender, males represented 48.0% and females 38.1%; no data was found in 13.9% of the cases. concerning location, 87.3% of the patients came from the state of antioquia. as for age at the time of admission to the institution, 44.3% of the children were less than thirty days old. most parents were between nineteen and thirty years old. most medical records did not show reports on the father or mother？s family history, diseases during pregnancy or tobacco and alcohol consumption during pregnancy. conclusions: this study evaluated the clinical records used at the clínica noel foundation. as a result, we recommend to homogenize the professionals who fill in the records and to standardize the instruments in order to generate reliable databases for future research.