No link found between academic test results and early oral cleft surgery

It has been thought that due to the timing of oral cleft surgeries, which are typically performed at an extremely young age, children with an oral cleft often experience cognitive dysfunction and academic underachievement. However, a recent study suggests that poor results on academic exams of children born with oral clefts are not related to early exposure to general anaesthesia.

Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and the University of Iowa recently published a study in the current issue of The Cleft Palate–Craniofacial Journal examining this theory. Because the definite age of maximum vulnerability to general anaesthesia is unknown and widely debated, it is unclear whether academic achievement among adolescents is affected by undergoing oral cleft surgery at an early age. The researchers suspected that any potential neurotoxic effect caused by extensive exposure to anaesthesia at an early age would show up in poor test results in ninth-grade final exams.

The researchers based their study on 558 adolescents from a nationwide Danish registry who had undergone surgery for cleft lip, cleft palate or both while young. The researchers found that 509 of the oral cleft children had been exposed to anaesthesia and had undergone at least one cleft operation. They compared the level of academic achievement of the students in the registry against that of a control group.