Speech Therapy Protocol After Palate Repair

Abstract

Speech therapy, administered after surgical repair of a cleft palate (with or without cleft lip), involves the identification of speech errors, followed by their correction. It also more importantly involves the prevention of the acquisition of speech errors in the child’s expressive repertoire through early intervention within the first 3–6 years of the child’s life. The speech therapist must work in close collaboration with the surgeon when there are obligatory speech errors that require surgical intervention. The prosthodontist and orthodontist may also be required to intervene along with the speech therapist to optimize the size and shape of the oral cavity, with or without surgical correction, for the production of intelligible connected speech.The speech therapist performs an in-depth and dynamic instrumental and noninstrumental assessment of speech before commencement of therapy in the realms of nasality, resonance, and articulation of speech sounds. The audible perception of the child’s speech plays a huge role in correction and stabilization of correctly learnt speech sounds. The speech therapist actively indulges in helping the child to learn to identify and discriminate correct versus incorrect speech sound production through listening and training, using own auditory feedback loop.KeywordsSpeech assessmentResonanceConsonantsVowelsFricativesPlosivesNasal grimacePlace of articulationManner of articulationNasopharyngoscopySpeech assessmentPerceptual assessmentNasality