Associations of Sleep Disordered Breathing and Neurodevelopment with Pre-Speech Function in 2-Month-Old Infants with Oral Cleft: A Feasibility Study

Objective Evaluate feasibility of a study to measure emergent language and pre-speech skills in infants with and without oral cleft. Functioning was assessed in relation to nighttime oxygenation and neural structure.Design Observational, case/control study.Setting Data was obtained at two clinical settings (University of Iowa and University of Pittsburgh Children's Hospital).Participants Twenty infants with and without oral cleft were enrolled and evaluated at 2 months of age. Seven additional infants the same age with a subset of measures from an earlier study were also included. The combined sample included 27 participants: 5 with cleft lip only (iCL), 8 with cleft lip and palate (iCLP), and 14 unaffected (UA).Main Outcome Measures Parent ratings of general functioning and emergent language (Bayley-4 SEABQ), acoustic measures of vocalizations, overnight pulse oximetry, and structural Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.Results Success rates for measures were high for emergent language and vocal acoustics (100% and 89%, respectively) and moderate for oximetry and MRI scans (63% and 70%, respectively). Participants with iCLP had the lowest outcomes for emergent language and vocal acoustics, as well as the highest number of desaturations and lowest myelin intensity.Conclusions The results of this study a) support feasibility of obtaining pre-speech, oxygenation, and neural measures in early infancy, b) identify patterns of higher risk for participants with iCLP, c) and suggest that some neural differences may be present prior to exposure to anesthesia.