D-Cleft

D-Cleft

Ruchi Gupta
V-Invent, India

Babies born with cleft palate anomaly suffer from feeding problems which interfere with their nutrition for growth and development; thereby, hampering the criteria for subsequent corrective surgery. The palatal cleft interferes with nursing and causes insufficient suckling or aspiration/nasal regurgitation of food. Because of altered anatomy and presence of oro-nasal fistula, baby tends to present suction difficulties due to lack of negative intraoral pressure. Presented here is an innovative solution – D-Cleft – A patented device for attaching on commercially-available feeding bottles to facilitate effective nutrition method.

The device was tried and tested successfully in many neonates born with cleft palate. It has been successfully used to feeding neonates by their mothers/care-takers with almost no training required. D-Cleft provided good seal of palatal defect from nasal regurgitation and was found to act as a scaffold against pressing of feeding-bottle’s nipple during suckling movements. It has overcome several disadvantages presented by in-dwelling tubes or long-term intra-oral attachment methods most importantly constant irritability for child. Other drawbacks such as impression procedure, sterilization and hygiene issues are almost non-existent.