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Management of Cleft-Related Speech Differences
Sara Kinter1, Lauren Beckett2, Randall A Bly3
1Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; Center for Child Health, Behavior, and Development, Seattle Children's Research Institute, Seattle, WA, USA; Craniofacial Center, Seattle Children's Hospital, Seattle, WA, USA.
None:
This article discusses management of cleft-related speech differences, stressing the need for differential diagnosis to distinguish between structural and functional etiologies. Structural differences, such as velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI), require surgery or prosthetics. Functional differences, like velopharyngeal mislearning, are addressed with speech therapy. A specialized speech-language pathologist (SLP) uses perceptual evaluation to inform diagnosis. For VPI surgery, planning is key to individualize surgery for the patient. However, surgical planning should be deferred until VPI can be confirmed from correctly articulated pressure consonants. Management requires collaborative interpretation of functional and anatomic characteristics by the surgeon and SLP.
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