Frequency of fistula in patients operated for primary cleft palate repair in a tertiary care center.

Objective: To determine the frequency of fistula in patients undergoing primary cleft palate repair. Study Design: Descriptive Case Series study. Setting: Burns and Plastic Surgery Center, HMC, Peshawar. Period: February 2023 to December 2023. Methods: Patient of both genders males and females undergoing primary cleft palate repair were included in the study with age ranging from 9 to 18 months age excluding patients with comorbids and syndromic patients. Non-probability consecutive sampling was adopted. The data was acquired from patients and hospital record and analyzed with statistical package for social sciences (SPSS). Results: Our study shows that among 169 patients, mean age was 10 months with SD ± 5.11. 100(59%) patients were male and 69(41%) patients were female. More over 3(2%) patients had fistula while 166(98%) patients didn’t had fistula. Conclusion: In this study we observed an internationally acceptable frequency of post-palatal repair fistula for primary cleft palate in our study population.