Treatment of patients with cleft lip, alveolus and palate--a short outline of history and current interdisciplinary treatment approaches.

Clefts of lip, alveolus and palate have been known for a long time. First tangible evidence of surgical therapy in terms of cheiloplasty, however, does not date further back than the 4th century after Christ. It was Werner Hagedorn from Magdeburg who laid the foundations of geometrical anatomical surgical lip repair in 1884. The procedures designed by LeMesurier, Tennison, Randall or Millard in the 1950s, and by Pfeifer in 1970 are part of today's cleft therapy applied by the different schools of surgery.