Speech Assessment in Bilateral Complete Palatoplasty

Park, Ji Hoon; Kim, Ju Heon; Park, Si Hyun; Kim, Jeong Tae; Kim, Seok Kwun

Abstract

The purpose of palatoplasty in cleft palate patient is to form normal speech and normal growth of maxilla. Still now, varient trial and evaluation to palatoplasty have been introduced and investigated for long time, but evaluation of long term result in platoplasty has been neglected. So, authors tried to analyze long term result in bilateral complete palatoplasty by speech analysis. The speech outcome was studied retrospectively in 27 bilateral complete cleft patients who underwent push-back palatoplasty from October 1990 to November 1997. The patient was underwent palatoplasty in 9-10 month old. The patients were divided to 4 group as 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10 year old and compared with 20 normal children (control groups were divided to 4 groups). Nasal emission test and hypernasality test and articulation test were done by speech evaluation table which was consisted of 39 different words. For nasal emission test, we test the numbers of nasal emission word. For hypernasality test and articulation test, each word has score such as normal; 3 points, fair; 2 points, poor 1 point and thus total score was 87points. The score of nasal emission was that the number of nasal emission word, and the number was reduced by aging. And the score of hypernasality test and articulation test was improved by aging. The score of patients who have been taken speech therapy was high in their age group. In comparison with normal control group, the score of patients was slightly lower than control group. And about 74.1% of the patients obtained normal speech after bilateral complete palatoplasty. So we think speech test after palatoplasty is necessary for assessment and treatment of the patients.