The purpose of the present study was to determine the prevalence of oral clefts in the city of Campos dos Goytacazes-RJ/Brazil, in children born from January 01, 1999 to December 31, 2004. Age group, cleft type, sex and race of the child were considered, as well as the marital status, education and origin of the child's mother at the time of birth. In this manner, the records of patients enrolled in reference services for treatment of craniofacial anomalies in the cities of Campos dos Goytacazes (RJ), Rio de Janeiro (RJ) and in Bauru (SP) were reviewed with the purpose of selecting those whose birth and/or residence was in the city of Campos dos Goytacazes, within the target period. After the initial selection, a search in the ISLB was conducted to define the universe of the study, which was: finding the children who were born alive between 1999 and 2004 whose mothers were living in Campos dos Goytacazes. In this period, using as a reference the mother's residence, the number of children born in the city was of 46,707, of which 63 had cleft lip with or without cleft palate, representing a prevalence of 1.35 cases in every 1,000 live births. The analysis of the data revealed that 55.6% of the patients were male; the most common type of cleft was isolated cleft palate and cleft lip and palate (34.9%); 61.3% of the cases were white children but the percentage of cases within each race did not differ statistically in relation to the distribution of births in the population; most of the mothers were single or married with little education.
Oral cleft; Prevalence; Oral epidemiology
