# Incidental Findings in Patients with Cleft Lip and Palate: A Case-Control Study
## 4 Discussion  
This is the first comprehensive study regarding IFs in various regions of the oral and maxillofacial area of patients with non-syndromic CL/P compared with unaffected peers. Patients who had undergone any previous orthodontic/surgical intervention were \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c} \hline \hline  & **All Participants** & **Controls** & **Cases** \\ \hline  & _n = 120_ & _n = 80_ & _n = 40_ \\ \hline Third molar aberrations, \(n\) (\%) & & & \\ No & 100 (83.3\%) & 70 (87.5\%) & 30 (75.0\%) \\ Yes & 20 (16.7\%) & 10 (12.5\%) & 10 (25.0\%) \\ Third molar impaction, \(n\) (\%) & & & \\ No & 108 (90.0\%) & 75 (93.8\%) & 33 (82.5\%) \\ Yes & 12 (10.0\%) & 5 (6.3\%) & 7 (17.5\%) \\ Third molar tooth agenesis, \(n\) (\%) & & & \\ No & 113 (94.2\%) & 75 (93.8\%) & 38 (95.0\%) \\ Yes & 7 (5.8\%) & 5 (6.3\%) & 2 (5.0\%) \\ Third molar taurodontism, \(n\) (\%) & & & \\ No & 119 (99.2\%) & 80 (100.0\%) & 39 (97.5\%) \\ Yes & 1 (0.8\%) & 0 (0.0\%) & 1 (2.5\%) \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 11: Descriptive statistics on third molar aberrations. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c} \hline \hline  & **No Third Molar Aberrations** & **Third Molar Aberrations** \\ \hline Cases & 30 (75.0\%) & 10 (25.0\%) \\ Controls & 70 (87.5\%) & 10 (12.5\%) \\ \(\chi^{2}\) = 3.00, dfs = 1, \(p\) = 0.083 (ns) & & \\ \hline  & **No Impaction** & **Impaction** \\ \hline Cases & 33 (82.5\%) & 7 (17.5\%) \\ Controls & 75 (93.8\%) & 5 (6.3\%) \\ \(\chi^{2}\) = 3.75, dfs = 1, \(p\) = 0.053 (ns) & & \\ \hline  & **No Tooth Agenesis** & **Tooth Agenesis** \\ \hline Cases & 38 (95.0\%) & 2 (5.0\%) \\ Controls & 75 (93.8\%) & 5 (6.3\%) \\ [PERSON]’s exact test \(p\) = 0.999 (ns) & & \\ \hline  & **No Taurodontism** & **Taurodontism** \\ \hline Cases & 39 (97.5\%) & 1 (2.5\%) \\ Controls & 80 (100.0\%) & 0 (0.0\%) \\ [PERSON]’s exact test \(p\) = 0.333 (ns) & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
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Table 12: Comparison of prevalence of third molar aberrations. excluded from the study, since tooth agenesis, as well as structural dental anomalies presented in patients, could be considered iatrogenic. This study retrospectively assessed OPT, LC radiographs, and CBCT scans to identify IFs in a cleft sample of 40 patients and compare these findings with those of 80 healthy subjects. As described earlier, all IFs were recorded and subdivided into ten anatomical areas. We hypothesized that the prevalence of IFs does not differ between cases of CL/P and controls. However, this hypothesis was not confirmed. After matching for age and gender, highly significant differences in the prevalence of IFs were observed between non-syndromic CL/P patients and unaffected individuals. In addition, we found large differences in the anatomical location of reported IFs, which illustrates the association of IFs' localization with cleft status. The findings of the present study may provide further insight to the clinicians who treat patients with non-syndromic orofacial clefts in establishing refined comprehensive treatment protocols. In previous studies [36; 37; 41], significantly more OPT and LC images of cleft patients or healthy orthodontic samples were assessed than in the present study. Yet, the risk of disregarding findings was probably higher, given that the radiographs were examined by two investigators with minimal involvement of a specialist radiologist. The current study demonstrated markedly more IFs, especially in the control group, compared with published research [15]. One explanation might lie in the absence of a structured assessment method of previously published research; thus, the true diagnoses might have been underestimated. The present study reported that the prevalence of IFs was significantly higher in the case group than in the control group. These results agree with previous studies [26; 38]. The 62.5% rate of IFs that was estimated in the control group of our study was lower than that of relative studies conducted by [PERSON] et al. (94.3%) [23], [PERSON] and [PERSON] (92.8%) [20], and [PERSON] et al.