The UVA cleft lip and palate team has a lot of experience and a lot of expertise across our various specialties to treat your child with cleft lip and palate.

We strive to give complete care.

We have a multidisciplinary clinic where our patients are able to see every specialty that they meet pertaining to their cleft and they can get everybody's recommendations all at one appointment which is great for convenience but it's also great for our providers to be able to be sure that we're not missing anything, that we're treating the whole patient.

The philosophy of the team is putting the patient first.

So it's a very stressful situation oftentimes for parents.

They have a newborn that has a condition that they don't fully understand.

We want to treat both the patient and the family to make sure that it's an easy time for them and make it is as easy as possible.

I find it very rewarding because the impact that I have is immediately visible even after an hour or two of surgery and it's a challenge that you have to deal with throughout their entire growth period.

It motivates me and it allows me to be a part of their life throughout their growth.

I think that our team does work very much hand-in-hand.

I think one of the things families like when they come to our clinic is that we are sharing information between ourselves right in front of them we want them to know what we're thinking and then we explain it to them and ask for their input on it.

But I think they feel very much that we are telling them everything that's going on, that they hear the discussions themselves.

Most of these children we will follow from infancy all the way through their adolescent and late teenage years.

I see them usually at a young age assessing their dental health and then end up providing orthodontic care usually when they're adolescents.

UVA is one of the few cleft teams that is certified by the American Cleft Palate Association in the state and that is a rigorous certification process because clefting should be taken care of in a multidisciplinary fashion.

We have really built this team with so many specialties and so many layers of expertise and experience and new ideas and the research and just the minds that are involved are unparalleled.