Castillo-Morales' orofacial therapy: treatment of 67 children with Down syndrome.

Infants with Down syndrome often present with a typical orofacial disorder, the features of which include hypotonicity of the perioral muscles, lips and chewing muscles, and a protruding tongue, later followed by active tongue protrusion, as well as problems with sucking, drooling, etc. This study presents the effects of Castillo-Morales' therapy with 67 Down syndrome children (average age at start of therapy 13.9 months), who wore the palatal plate intermittently for an average of 12.1 months. Significant positive results were obtained in spontaneous tongue position, upper and lower lip tonicity and position, mouth closure, drooling and sucking.