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Speech intelligibility of patients with cleft lip and palate after placement of speech prosthesis
João Henrique Nogueira Pinto1, Gisele da Silva Dalben, Maria Inês Pegoraro-Krook
1Department of Prosthodontics, Hospital for Rehabilitation of Craniofacial Anomalies, University of São Paulo, Brazil. joaoh@centrinho.usp.br
Objective:
To evaluate the speech intelligibility of patients with clefts before and after placement of a speech prosthesis.
Design:
Cross-sectional.
Setting:
Hospital for Rehabilitation of Craniofacial Anomalies, University of São Paulo (HRAC/USP), Bauru, Brazil.
Patients:
Twenty-seven patients with unoperated cleft palate or operated cleft palate presenting with velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI) after primary palatoplasty, treated with speech prosthesis, aged 8 to 63 years.
Interventions:
Patients were fitted with palatopharyngeal obturators or pharyngeal bulbs, suitable to their dental needs. Five speech-language pathologists blindly evaluated speech samples of the patients with and without the prosthesis.
Main Outcome Measures:
Classification of speech samples according to a scoring system developed for speech intelligibility problems: 1 (normal), 2 (mild), 3 (mild to moderate), 4 (moderate), 5 (moderate to severe), and 6 (severe). Results were evaluated by the calculation of means of all judges for each patient in both situations.
Results:
The judges presented significant agreement (W=.789, p<.01). Speech intelligibility was significantly better after placement of the prosthesis for both unoperated patients (Z=1.93, p=.02) and operated patients with VPI after primary palatoplasty (Z=1.78, p=.03).
Conclusions:
Speech intelligibility may be improved by rehabilitation of patients with cleft palate using a speech prosthesis. Speech therapy is needed to eliminate any compensatory articulation productions developed prior to prosthetic management.
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