Outcomes of Prosthodontic Management and Speech Therapy in Person with Submucous Cleft

OUTCOMES OF PROSTHODONTIC MANAGEMENT AND SPEECH THERAPY IN PERSON WITH SUBMUCOUS CLEFT

1 Navya. A, 2 Pushpavathi. M, 3 Sreedevi. N, 4 Dakshaini. M. R.

1Junior Research Fellow, 2 Professor, 3Lecturer, 4Professor.
123Department of Speech Language Pathology, AIISH
4Dept of Prosthodontics, JSS Dental College, Mysore.

Email: [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail] [e-mail].

INTRODUCTION

Speech is the coordinated function of the vocal tract includes respiratory, phonatory, resonatory and articulatory systems. Hindrance to any of these systems results in speech disorders. Cleft lip and palate (CLP) is one such congenital disorder leading to speech disorder. The abnormal speech of these individuals with cleft lip and palate can be analyzed interms of acoustical, perceptual and physiological measurements.

The speech of individuals with cleft palate is primarily characterized by abnormalities in nasal resonance. This is a direct result of unoperated cleft / fistula and or velopharyngeal dysfunction. The individuals with velopharyngeal dysfunction cannot either adequately or consistently close the velopharyngeal port during speech leading to nasal escape of sound energy. In addition, there may be articulatory errors, including compensatory articulations and reduced voice quality resulting in poor speech intelligibility (McWilliams, Morris & Shelton, 1990; Kuehn & Moller, 2000; Kummer, 2001; Peterson-Falzone, Hardin-Jones & Karnell, 2001; Bzoch, 2004). Nasal resonance increases and is perceived as hypernasality if the durations of the velopharyngeal opening and closing movements in relation to the opening and closing of the oral cavity become prolonged. Many investigators have showed that certain timing measures reflecting the movements of speech articulators are related to the degree of oral-nasal resonance imbalance in individuals with cleft palate with or without cleft lip (Warren et al., 1985;

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