Breakthrough for babies with cleft palates

Blood from the umbilical cord could be used to repair cleft palates in babies, scientists claim. The new treatment - trialled on nine children in Colombia - could replace the need for bone grafts when children get older. Cleft palates, in which the skull has a gap on the face where the nose and mouth join up, affect around one in every 700 babies. Doctors now believe using stem cells taken from umbilical cord blood could reduce the number of operations affected babies need. Researchers at the Hospital De San Jose in Bogota, Colombia, trialled the new surgery on nine children over the past 10 years. They said the operation showed good results in attempts to grow a new bone from scratch, to repair clefts. Current treatments for cleft palates can involve removing bone from elsewhere in the body, such as the hip, to then graft into the mouth.