Partnership Projects of Children’s Lifeline™ & Smiles International

• Total Patient Selection Pool to date: 365
• (several new patients arrived for entrance to
• program)
• Number of patients screened and treated with SLP, Tx Plan, and Therapy review: 50
• Number of cases selected for surgery: 23 – 4 = 19
  Number of cases rescheduled due to illness: 4
• Surgical reconstructive procedures performed: 67
  • (reason for multiple procedures performed under the same pediatric anesthesia; it was performed this way to make best use of the opportunity for child’s overall safety with less exposures to anesthesia throughout care.)
• Relative value of cases if performed in the USA at hospital setting with specialist anesthesia , surgeons, and nursing facility charges: $421,500.00 USD

The Team

Team members working at the February 2025 CaboSmiles clinic:

Thank you and CLI again for your support in partnership with the children’s cleft surgical repairs missions. We just completed last week’s project in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and had a very successful time with the children.

It went well the same as last August with the offer to use two hospitals so that we can continue to provide the children, as they grow through their 5-7 surgical stages, completion of their facial bone osteotomy reconstructive surgery. We pray that this continues to be an option as the administration of the H+ hospital has changed and there were some questions as to whether they would continue to share their facility.

Busy Patient Screening Area

Beyond Surgery

Our Board-Certified Speech and Language Pathologists Evaluate and Make Surgical Recommendations to the Surgeons for Speech Surgical Correction Throat and Palate Flap

Back to the Operating Room

Again the SLP team was able to actively use the Rotary Granted Nasopharyngoscopy unit to interface with the Cranio-Maxillofacial surgeons to pre-plan the best methods for them to structure the pharyngeal/palatal surgery reconstructions to produce the best speech patterns following the child’s healing. The added benefit to this was the training that ensued during the clinic days with 2 local ENT and Maxillofacial Surgeons along with their nursing staff on the use of this complex evaluation video-endoscope so that it can be used between clinics to provide early scheduling of the cases and more surgeries produced.

While there were no new primary cleft lip cases this mission, several primary palates and many lip/noses and palatal second stages were treated out of the now collectively 365 total patients in our mission charting files, with some new children presenting with their primary open palates.

This mission saw new patients and ongoing patients. We were able to give many children an opportunity to get their surgical staged procedures including the another opportunity for us to use the H+ Hospital Mas for comprehensive and complex facial bone repositioning surgery of Orthognathic-Reconstruction on the first Monday of the week giving the child operated there completion of their sixth and final surgical correction necessary to enter society with ability to eat, speak, breath, and hear with the placement of ear tubes at the same time which now gives us ALL a great SMILE.

More training of local surgeons and their assistants in the use of the nasopharyngeal endoscopy unit provided by the Rotary International Global Grant last year was performed and the success of having the equipment available year through at the Maxi-Med facility in proximity to the H. Especialidades was a huge benefit in both planning the surgical procedures for accuracy of speech function, but for the follow-up on the patients having had their surgeries performed and evaluation of their therapeutic results.

CLI’s Ongoing Support

The joint efforts through Children’s Lifeline International and the Smiles International Foundations give hundreds and thousands of children afflicted with facial cleft differences and deformities hope for a more normalized future, allowing them to grow and flourish in their communities. The abilities to eat, speak, breathe, hear and SMILE cannot be underestimated. These procedures allow integration of these young patients into their communities as functioning young adult members of the work force.

Prof. Jeffrey J. Moses DDS, FAACS
Diplomate, Amer. Board Oral/Maxillofacial Surgery President/Founder,
Smiles International Foundation