In the Lahore, cleft lip and palate treatment is carried out by the Dr. Atta-ul-Haq at his state-of-the-art clinic located at Johar Town Lahore. Babies born with a cleft will need repair surgery. The objective of cleft lip surgery is to bring back normal look and function to the upper lip. Cleft lip surgery is usually performed at three to five months of life. The tissue in the area adjacent to the cleft is rearranged to close the opening. An important part of the treatment involves detaching and repositioning the muscle of the lip to recreate the circular muscle around the mouth. At the time of lip repair, surgery is also performed to improve the appearance of the nose Cleft palate repair is typically performed on infants that are between 8 and 18 months of age. Since the primary goal of repairing the palate is to avoid any abnormal speech development, the surgery is performed before the child develops much speech. One or more follow-up procedures may be needed once the lip and/or palate repairs have healed. Additional surgery to help with speech may sometimes be necessary for those with a cleft palate. These will all be under general anaesthetic, and if necessary the patient will be monitored both before and after surgery by specialists to check for changes in speech, etc.

Yes. But it can be managed, provided the parents are given appropriate training and provided appropriate bottles and nipples are used. The child with an unrepaired cleft palate can learn to feed by bottle. These are short term problems because a cleft lip is usually repaired at four to 4 to 8 months of age and a cleft palate is usually repaired around 12 to 15 months of age, so feeding problems caused by the cleft should not last longer than this.

That varies from patient to patient. At the minimum, one surgery is needed to repair the lip and a separate surgery is needed to repair the palate.