Craniofacial and special care orthodontics is a specific area of the specialty of orthodontics. The focus is on the interdisciplinary management of patients with birth defects or other conditions that would often require coordinated surgical intervention or extraordinary behavioral attention in addition to clinical orthodontics alone.
The most common birth defect of the face is cleft lip and palate. It affects approximately 1:700 Caucasians, more often in American Indians/Asians (1:300), and less often in African-Americans (1:1000). Craniofacial microsomia is the second most common birth defect of the face afflicting approximately 1:5000.
Management of these most challenging patients is ideally delivered in a team setting and usually spans the first two decades of life.
An exciting and effective technique that Dr. Judah learned in New York and brought to Portland is Nasoalveolar molding (NAM). NAM molds the nose, gum pads, and lips of an infant with a cleft prior to the first surgery to optimize the initial surgical outcome. Research has shown that this can lead to a decrease in the need for surgical revisions of the lip and nose.
Garfinkle Orthodontics is one of the premiere offices in the country for providing craniofacial and special care orthodontics. Dr. Judah brings his formal craniofacial orthodontic fellowship training and is the director of craniofacial orthodontics at OHSU Doernbecher’s Children Hosptial. Dr. Richard has been a member of the Emanuel Cleft Team for over 15 years. The staff at Garfinkle Orthodontics is experienced and confident when working with patients that require craniofacial and special care treatment.
The experience and insight we gain from treating our patients with craniofacial issues contributes to our understanding and management of our non-craniofacial patients, and vice versa. The diversity of our patient pool benefits our practice families and our entire community.
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