A grant awarded to Penn Dental Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia will help create a new program that focuses on providing dental care to children and adults with a rare genetic disorder, Cornelia de Lange Syndrome (CdLS). Since many children with CdLS have cognitive issues, dental care is often performed under sedation and requires experienced pediatric specialists to deliver proper dental care.

Rochelle G. Lindemeyer, associate professor emeritus of pediatric dentistry at Penn Dental Medicine and CHOP and the Center’s consulting dentist, is the grant’s principal investigator. Co-investigators on the project are Ian D. Krantz, director of the Center for Cornelia de Lange Syndrome and Related Diagnoses, and Sarah E. Raible, a genetic counselor and clinical director of the Center.

The $30,000 grant, awarded by Delta Dental as one of its Access to Care grants, will help create a program within CHOP’s Center for Cornelia de Lange Syndrome and Related Diagnoses to support dental care for children and adults with CdLS and similar diagnoses. All outpatient CHOP dental care is performed at Penn Dental Medicine within the School’s division of pediatric dentistry, while patients requiring general anesthesia are treated at CHOP.