Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether a patient with a cleft's age, associated syndrome, cleft phenotype or travel distance affects their follow-up rate.
Design: This study is a retrospective review of patients with CL/P treated by a craniofacial clinic.
Setting: The setting was a craniofacial clinic at a tertiary care university hospital.
Patients, participants: Candidates were patients seen by the craniofacial clinic between January 2007 and December 2019. An initial pool of 589 patients was then reduced to 440 due to exclusion criteria.
Interventions: None.
Main outcome measure(s): The outcome measure was actual patient attendance to the craniofacial team compared to the team goal expectation of annual return visits.
Results: The mean age of participants at the end of the study was 9.0 ± 5.4 years with a mean follow-up period (total possible follow-up period length based on patient age at presentation and study window) of 5.5 ± 3.6 years. There was no association between cleft phenotype, type of syndrome, or distance to the clinic with attendance. Children with syndromes had an 11% decrease in the odds of attending follow-up visits with each 1-year increase in age compared to a 4% decrease in children without syndromes.
Conclusions: The only significant factors determining patient attendance were the presence of a syndrome and increasing age.
Keywords: barriers to care; cleft lip and palate; distance to care center; patient follow-up; syndrome.