A baby born with the congenital birth defect called
cleft palate (also known as palatoschisis) mentioned in the article Topamax Cleft Palate Lawsuits, is a rare case of craniofacial malformation which happens inside the pregnant mother's belly while the baby's fetal development was still on its progress. The abnormal facial development can be a combination of cleft lip (also known as cheiloshisis) and cleft palate. Cleft lip and cleft palate are two variations of congenital birth defect affecting the oral and facial development which varies in the location and the oral section where the uncompleted fusion occurred. Since our lips and palate are formed separately during fetal development, it is possible that one can have both cleft lip and cleft palate, or one can have only cleft lip, or cleft palate, or two clefts of the same type.
Cleft palate affects the roof of the mouth and sometimes there are no obvious signs of deformity seen visually from the outside, unlike in cleft lip, but speech can be greatly affected and the oral malformation eventually detected. The gap in cleft palate is caused by insufficient amount of tissue needed to form the palate during the crucial time of fetal development inside the mother's womb. The clefting anomaly roughly affects 1 out of 700 born children every year. There were cases encountered where the craniofacial defect impaired even the nose, cheeks, eyes and forehead of the born baby.
According to a U.S. survey conducted to estimate the gravity of the birth defect it was found that it is one of the commonly seen birth defect every year. Babies who were born under Asian, Latin or Native American descent were often affected by this condition. Cleft palate was also believed to be genetic in nature since those who have siblings or close relatives born with cleft palates were often afflicted by the craniofacial anomaly at birth too.
Genetic and environmental factors are some of the speculated reasons for this birth defect, but scientists and researchers has not come up with a concrete cause for this condition. Some people point to harmful medication intake by the pregnant mother lead to the disfigurement. It is important to remember that one should not take any medications, especially those who are pregnant, without knowing what are the effects of the drug to the body and without consulting one's doctor. For those who were affected by some anti-migraine drugs such as Topamax, you can file your Topamax birth defect lawsuit and gain just compensation. There are various sites available which are concerned with this type of case.
