Can speech disorders of children with cleft palate be justified by central auditory skills?

Abstract

Individuals with cleft lip and palate (CLP) usually have speech-language disorders with manifestations in voice, speech, language, swallowing, breathing and hearing. Regarding the hearing, these individuals tend to have recurrent otitis media. This otitis is one of the most common causes of hearing loss in children with CLP up to 10 years of age. This kind of hearing loss is conductive and bilateral. It is known that normal hearing is essential for the acquisition of oral language and effective verbal communication and that any auditory system deficit, congenital or acquired, affects sound transmission and/or perception. Any hearing loss offers sensory deprivation, which may lead to disorders in different central skills. There is an increasing amount of scientific research related to auditory skills in subjects with CLP, but a scarcity in studies related to central auditory skills and speech disorders, such as the compensatory articulations and velopharyngeal dysfunction. Thus, we hypothesized that children with CLP could be noticing the phonemes incorrectly, replacing them with articulatory joints due to disorders in central auditory skills. This study aims at verifying the association among the central auditory skills and velopharyngeal dysfunction compensatory articulation in subjects with cleft lip and palate surgery. In this study, a prospective study must be carried out with nearly 40 patients with cleft lip and palate surgery, who are registered in the Hospital for Rehabilitation of Craniofacial Anomalies, University of São Paulo (HRAC-USP). Data on compensatory articulations and velopharyngeal dysfunction will be initially investigated in medical records in order to constitute the study sample. Afterwards, the subjects will undergo a peripheral audiological evaluation and auditory processing tests. We will also analyze if these children speech disorders may be justified by alterations in the central auditory skills. (AU)