Oklahoma City doctor hopes to offer new smiles

Oklahoma City surgeon Dr. Robert Glade will travel to China next week on a medical mission to treat orphans with cleft lips and cleft palates.

The Chinese government often won’t allow the children to be adopted by foreigners until their deformities are repaired, Glade said. That means the surgeries not only give the children a normal appearance but a chance at finding a new home.

"It’s fantastic,” said Glade, a pediatric head and neck surgeon at The Children’s Hospital at OU Medical Center.

"There’s a lot of immediate gratification. You take a child that has a great deformity and make them look nearly normal in one setting. Plus they can get adopted and they are not in an orphanage.”

Glade and a group of medical professionals from Arkansas will be in China for a week starting Wednesday and hope to complete up to 50 operations on babies and children in several Beijing orphanages. The doctors are paying for their own travel, but surgical supplies and space have been donated.

He said the incidence of cleft lip and palate are higher in Asian populations. In China, where families are discouraged from having more than one child, such a deformity causes some parents to abandon their babies.

Children born with cleft lips or palates often have speech difficulties and problems socializing. Babies with cleft lips may even die of malnutrition because it is hard for them to feed from a bottle.

Glade has made six previous trips to China. He said using his skills to help others is satisfying.

"It reminds you of why you went to medical school,” he said.