Craniofacial cleft
A facial cleft is an opening or gap in the face, or a malformation of a part of the face. Facial clefts is a collective term for all sorts of clefts. All structures like bone, soft tissue, skin etc. can be affected. Facial clefts are extremely rare congenital anomalies. There are many variations of a type of clefting and classifications are needed to describe and classify all types of clefting. Facial clefts hardly ever occur isolated; most of the time there is an overlap of adjacent facial clefts. Classifications There are different classifications about facial clefts. Two of the most used classifications are the Tessier classification and the Van der Meulen classification. Tessier is based on the anatomical position of the cleft and Van der Meulen classification is based on the embryogenesis. Tessier classification In 1976 Paul Tessier published a classification on facial clefts based on the anatomical position of the clefts. The different types of Tessier clefts are numbered 0 to 14. These 15 different types of clefts can be put into 4 groups, based on their position: midline clefts, paramedian clefts, orbital clefts and lateral clefts. The Tessier classification describes the clefts at soft tissue level as well