This book (second edition) attempts to cover all the scientific and clinical disciplines related to cleft care, which is indeed a wide remit. It ably achieves its aims. It provides coverage of cleft care from prenatal diagnosis to definitive orthognathic surgery and lip nose revision.
However, with one of the two volumes dedicated to surgical aspects, it has an understandable surgical emphasis. This lends itself to surgeons with a cleft interest who would like to have a blueprint for, not only the surgical procedures, but also the methodology of the other members of the multidisciplinary team. It is an enjoyable and very comprehensive read, being well written, presented, illustrated and organised. Whilst it takes a definite US perspective, it gives a good overview of the historical, international and evidence base for current cleft practice.
The gingivoperioplasty (GPP) chapter is well considered, outlining the technical procedure and the controversies around this procedure, both historical and contemporary, and describes the current debate regarding nasoalveolar moulding and GPP. The alveolar bone grafting chapter gives a good description of a standard approach to alveolar bone grafting and reviews current and potential future graft materials.
Orthognathic surgery is separated into planning and surgery chapters. It would seem natural to separate the planning and surgery for cleft orthognathic surgery; however, having different authors for these chapters makes them less coherent than they could be. Conventional planning and 3D planning are both covered well although the computer assisted planning is a developing field and so it is likely to be difficult to reproduce their protocol. Obstructive sleep apnoea is omitted in these chapters which might be a consideration for the third edition. Maxillary distraction osteogenesis is covered in a balanced manner recognising the limitations and advantages of this technique.
This is undoubtedly a comprehensive book on the modern multidisciplinary management of the cleft lip and palate patient. It is an excellent second edition of an already established multi-speciality book on cleft care. It would be a very useful addition to any cleft lip and palate team library. The first volume includes the fundamental aspects of cleft science including embryology, anatomy, epidemiology and genetics. It covers nursing and primary care, paediatric assessment, neuropsychological issues and speech including velopharangeal dysfunction.
The second volume is primarily aimed at the surgeon including dental and orthodontic considerations. This second edition comes with two DVDs covering anatomy, embryology, all the way up to videos of operative techniques.
This book is beautifully illustrated with many colour photographs and line drawings. It is primarily a reference book for the cleft team and extremely valuable for the cleft surgical trainee, and for the established cleft surgeon.
