Similarly, the main character in Graham Greenes 1936 crime noir novel A Gun for Sale, Raven, has a cleft lip which he is sensitive about, and is described as "an ugly man dedicated to ugly deeds". In the 1976 Patricia A. McKillip novel The Night Gift, one of the high-school aged protagonists is shy because she has a cleft lip, but learns to have more confidence in herself. In the first edition of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, one of the people Gilderoy Lockhart stole credit from was a witch with a harelip who banished the Bandon Banshee. In later editions, this was changed to a witch with a hairy chin.In chapter 26 of Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn meets the three Wilks sisters, Mary Jane, Susan, and Joanna. Joanna is described as, "the one who gives herself to good works and has a hare-lip." As a form of offensive synecdoche, Huck Finn refers to Joanna as "the hare-lip" rather than by her name. In Inheritance, the final title of Christopher Paolinis Inheritance Cycle, the main character Eragon heals a newborn girl with this condition in a display of complicated healing magic. It is stated that those within Eragons society born with this condition are often not allowed to live as they face a very hard life.Cleft lip and cleft palate are often portrayed negatively in popular culture.
For example, some teams wait on jaw correction until the child is aged 10 to 12 (argument: growth is less influential as deciduous teeth are replaced by permanent teeth, thus saving the child from repeated corrective surgeries), while other teams correct the jaw earlier (argument: less speech therapy is needed than at a later age when speech therapy becomes harder). Within teams, treatment can differ between individual cases depending on the type and severity of the cleft. Cleft lip
Within the first 2–3 months after birth, surgery is performed to close the cleft lip. While surgery to repair a cleft lip can be performed soon after birth, often the preferred age is at approximately 10 weeks of age, following the "rule of 10s" coined by surgeons Wilhelmmesen and Musgrave in 1969 (the child is at least 10 weeks of age; weighs at least 10 pounds, and has at least 10g hemoglobin). If the cleft is bilateral and extensive, two surgeries may be required to close the cleft, one side first, and the second side a few weeks later. The most common procedure to repair a cleft lip is the Millard procedure pioneered by Ralph Millard. Millard performed the first procedure at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) unit in Korea.Often an incomplete cleft lip requires the same surgery as complete cleft. This is done for two reasons. Firstly the group of muscles required to purse the lips run through the upper lip. To restore the complete group a full incision must be made.