title: Difficulties in obtaining a sample of young adult cleft lip and palate subjects and their relatives.
abstract: Families of individuals aged 15-24 yr born with cleft lip, with or without cleft palate, and suitable control families were required for a study of inherited predisposition to the malformation. Cleft patients were identified through hospital discharge listings, but the overall yield of participating patients was only 8% of the cases listed. An attempt to recruit control subjects by the same method, using patients who had been hospitalized for dissection tonsillectomy, yielded only 4% of those identified as suitable in the discharge listings. The results highlight the value of specialized, regularly updated disease registers in the recruitment of subjects for research purposes.
authors.forename: F C
authors.initials: FC
authors.lastname: Crawford
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Sofaer
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002971:Cleft Lip / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics*; D002972:Cleft Palate / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008499:Medical Records; D012042:Registries; D012107:Research Design; D012606:Scotland