Ineke Wolswijk and Carina Bethlehem win MCL awards for pioneering scientific research › Medical Center Leeuwarden

Five studies were nominated for the Auletius Prize, an annual science award. Ineke Volsvik, dentist and researcher, began her doctoral research with the cleft team at MCL in January 2021.

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Wolswijk conducted research on mandibular agenesis in children with non-syndromic cleft palate. This is a cleft lip, jaw and/or palate. Agenesis means that the tooth has not developed, which often requires dental treatment. Wolswijk, together with A. Matthews-Brzozowski, an oral surgeon on the cleft team, conducted a retrospective file review in which 229 X-rays of MCL cleft lip patients were evaluated for mandibular agenesis. This was compared to X-rays of 260 children without cleft palates who attended an oral and maxillofacial surgery (MKA) outpatient clinic. This showed that children with cleft palate more often had agenesis of the lower jaw than children without cleft palate: 10.5% compared to 5.5%. When looking specifically at different forms of cleft palate, researchers observed twice as much mandibular agenesis in children with cleft lip, jaw and palate (‘cheilognathopalatoschisis’) and three times more frequently in children with cleft palate only (‘cheilognathopalatoschisis’). Cleft palate (‘palatoschisis’) compared to children who do not suffer from cleft palate. In the group with complete palatine cleft, up to 26% (one in four) had mandibular agenesis. This indicates that dental problems in the lower jaw are associated with cleft palate and should be considered as part of this condition.

I hope I can publish this research to raise awareness of this phenomenon. We hope that this will contribute to reimbursement of the costs of dental treatment for mandibular agenesis in cleft palate. In addition, the dataset we have now collected provides the opportunity to investigate further dental questions related to cleft palate. I would like to continue working on this in the coming years. “Dental problems associated with cleft palate can no longer be considered an isolated problem of the upper jaw,” says Wolsvejk.