**2.2 Delayed dental development**

Several investigators reported on delayed formation of the permanent teeth in CLP patients and the delay was observed to vary from 0.3 to 0.9 year [16–22].

Bailit and coworkers found that tooth formation in 39 children with cleft palate was significantly retarded by about 0.7 year when compared with 36 normal controls [16]. Ranta in his earlier study compared 258 CLP Finnish children with 1162 noncleft children and reported a delay in tooth formation of 0.5 year in the maxilla and 0.4 year in the mandible, but the difference was not statistically significant [18].
