[Diagnosis of velopharyngeal incompetence after primary cleft palate repair]

Fifty four patients who had had primary cleft palate surgery and whose speech remained defective were examined by speech intelligibility test, lateral videofluoroscopy and flexible nasopharyngoscopy. We found that there are obvious individual differences in the velopharyngeal closure pattern of the patients with speech deficiency following primary surgery. The velopharyngeal closure patterns can be grouped into five categories according to the manner of the velum and lateral pharyngeal wall movements. The criteria of the classification and its significance are discussed in this paper.