Multidisciplinary care of international patients with cleft palate using telemedicine.

C left lip and palate is the most common congenital malformation, with an incidence of 1 per 600 to 1000 live births worldwide. In the developed world, the treatment and repair of children with cleft palate (CP) is multidisciplinary, involving care given by speech-language pathologists, otolaryngologists, plastic surgeons, nutritionists, dentists, and geneticists. International volunteer groups routinely provide quality surgical care; however, the repair of the palate must be followed by speech therapy in order for these children to be able to speak normally. Currently, no effective strategy has been developed to address this disparity and provide postoperative speech training. The lifelong effects of speech deficits are profound and well documented. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has stated that telepractice (telehealth) is an appropriate model of service delivery for the speechlanguage pathology (SLP) profession. To date, only 1 (anecdotal) article has described the use of telemedicine to deliver speech therapy to patients after surgery in the developing world; however, no objective measures were used. Although only 1 study to date has addressed the use of telepractice to deliver speech therapy following the repair of CP, there have been numerous studies that have shown that providing SLP services for other speech disorders via telecommunications is both feasible and beneficial.