[Children with cleft lip and palate].

Objective: Defining the end of the nasofacial growth spurt, in order to schedule rhinoseptoplasty in cleft patients without disturbing nasofacial growth. Data sources: Pubmed and Cochrane bibliographic databases. Primary indexing terms: ‘facial growth’. Confining search terms: (face OR nose) AND growth AND (cephalometry OR anthropometry). The reference lists of the retrieved articles were searched for missed relevant studies. Articles written in English, German or Dutch. Search results up to December 2007 included. Study selection: Data for Caucasian children, without genetic disorders or malformations. Their growth pattern should have been followed from at least age 12 until age 18, with intervals between relevant measurements not longer than two years. Data extraction: No further guidelines used. Data Synthesis: Growth velocity curves were fit to different relevant measures for nasofacial growth. The end of the nasofacial growth spurt was defined as the age at which these growth velocity curves have their steepest descending slope. This yielded an average age of 13.1 years for girls and 14.7 years for boys. Because no information could be found for the spread in individual nasal growth as a function of age, 2 standard deviations of the age distribution for body height growth velocity were added, giving 98% of caucasian girls being nasally mature at age 15.8 and 98% of caucasian boys at age 16.9. Conclusion: Rhinoseptoplasty can safely be performed after age 16 in girls and 17 in boys. Nasal growth aNd maturatioN age iN adolesceNts