Speech outcome after cleft palate surgery with the Göteborg regimen including delayed hard palate closure

The regimen for treatment of children with cleft lip and palate in Göteborg, Sweden, until 1996 included early soft palate repair at 6-8 months of age and delayed closure of the hard palate at about 8 years of age to improve maxillary growth. The aims of this report were to describe the treatment concept and to present speech data of 59 children treated by this method. The speech of 38 children with unilateral and 21 with bilateral cleft lip and palate was evaluated perceptually from standardised tape recordings of repeated sentences and spontaneous speech at five ages from 3 to 16 years of age. All patients were not evaluated at each age level. The results showed a low prevalence of hypernasality after hard palate closure and pharyngeal flap surgery in only five children (8%), indicating a primary velopharyngeal insufficiency in less than 10% of the children. Only three children with bilateral clefts had glottal articulation when at pre-school age and no child with a unilateral cleft did. These results were interpreted as an indication of velopharyngeal competence (VPC) in most of the children. In addition, the speech problem found in these children consisted of retracted oral articulation of alveo-dental pressure plosives, which is almost always an indicator of VPC. However, we do consider that retracted oral articulation is a problem and to improve our results further we have decided to modify the technique for soft palate closure slightly and place the vomer flap further anteriorly to encourage narrowing of the cleft in the hard palate, and to close the hard palate at 3 years of age.