Speech outcome after closure of oronasal fistula in cleft patients
Nattinee Pitaksirianant, D.D.S., Atiphan Pimkhaokham, D.D.S., Ph.D., Chai Wutiwiwatchai, Ph.D., Keskanya Subbalekha, D.D.S., Ph.D.
Objectives: To compare the speech outcome after surgical closure of oronasal fistula (ONF) in unilateral cleft lip and palate (CLP) patients using speech recognition score (SRS) and SI score.
Methods: Fourteen unilateral CLP patients with an average age of 11.64±3.59 years had undergone surgical closure of ONF with bone graft. The patients' utterances were recorded 1 day before closure of oronasal fistula and 3 months afterwards. Each subject's utterance was analyzed to obtain a speech recognition score (SRS) using the automatic speech recognition (ASR) system. For the conventional SI, each recorded utterance was judged by three listeners. The mean percentage of correct words from 3 listeners was represented as SI score. Paired t-test was used to determine statistical significance (p<0.05). The speech outcome after surgery was evaluated using both SRS and SI score.
Results: The SRS and SI score of unilateral CLP patients were significantly increased after surgery (p=0.024 and 0.003, respectively).
Conclusions: The post-op speech outcome in unilateral CLP patients using ASR system and conventional SI were improved.