Continental Europe may do it better than Britain

The management of cleft lips and palates, owing to their complex and protean nature, is often unsatisfactory. Worryingly, the two British centres in a recent study of six European centres had the worst results.1 A Medline search shows that over the past two years 25 publications have reported the results of cleft surgery: 16 from continental Europe, four from the United States, two from other countries, and one from Britain. This year's July/August issue of the German maxillofacial journal, Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Mund-Kiefer und Gesichtschirurgie, is almost entirely devoted to cleft lip and palate surgery. Why are British results …