Cleft Palate Research Paper

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Identifying Environmental Causes of Cleft Palate It is hard for adults to think about Cleft Palate/Lip that may be affecting other families. Cleft Palate is a challenging birth defect, for years after birth, children may need breathing tubes while they sleep, other long term effects of Cleft Palate are hearing loss and speech problems. Future mothers, and the rest of society need to take precaution of certain environments that can cause Cleft Palate, along with many other birth defects. Cleft Palate can be a life time of challenges, “The issue of my Cleft speech had tremendous power to upset me. It only took a child to hold their nose and mimic me and I wanted to die” (Gibbons 53). Hearing about how life is with Cleft Palate, who has a job …show more content…

According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 6% of cleft palates in the United States are caused by smoking. Which means that in one year, 400 children could potentially be born with Cleft Palate. But, in other countries and cultures, smoking is not a major cause of the birth defect, “the proportion of infants exposed to maternal cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption was very low among Asian mothers (around 4%)” (Wu 3). Because smoking is becoming more and more common, other people might be putting pregnant women around them at risk because of second hand smoking, even if the women who is pregnant is not …show more content…

It can cause anxiety because it is harder to communicate for them. Especially when the child is in Elementary school, this age is prime time for children to learn communication skills that will set them up for the rest of their lives. Other problems caused by Cleft Palate or Lip may be hearing loss, breathing tubes that are needed for sleeping, or speech problems. Because there are so many social effects of Cleft Palate or Lip, there are great resources for families to use, Scott Dailey, the author of “Feeding and Swallowing Management in Infants with Cleft Palate and Craniofacial Anomalies” gives two organizations that help families with Cleft, , “Cleft-craniofacial teams and the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association/Cleft Palate Foundation are valuable resources for parents and professions dealing with infants with feeding and swallowing disorders related to cleft and craniofacial anomalies.” Because this birth defect is more than genetics, and families without the gene for Cleft can still have infants born with Cleft, teams and organizations like the ones mentioned, are becoming more of a social

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