Intensive speech therapy program in patients with cleft lip and palate

Objectives: a) describe an intensive speech therapy program (ISTP) for the treatment of cleft lip and palate speech; b) compare the speech outcome of patients with cleft lip and palate before (pre-ISTP) and immediately after the ISTP (immediate post-ISTP); c) verify if the outcome obtained after the ISTP (imediate post-ISTP) remained the same after a minimum of a six- month period (follow up-ISTP). Methods: 20 operated cleft lip and palate subjects (8 males and 12 females) with presenting with velopharyngeal insufficiency and hypodynamic velopharynx were selected to this study. All of them had hypernasality and/or compensatory articulations (CAs). Due to hypodynamic velopharynx a pharyngeal bulb (in steady of secondary surgery) combined with an ISTP was indicated. The ISTP had 45 sessions of therapy (3 sessions a day) during three weeks. This program had a sequence of seven steps: 1) perception and control of intraoral pressure/flow; 2) quantification of intraoral pressure; 3) reduction of nasal air pressure and increase of intra-oral air pressure; 4) target sound approach; 5) articulation training with intraoral air pressure to produce the target sound; 6) self-monitoring of target sound without facilitating cues; and 7) automatization of target sounds in directed and spontaneous speech. All patients had their speech evaluated before the ISTP (pre-ISTP), immediately after the ISTP (immediate post-ISTP), and after a minimum period of six months after the end of the ISTP (follow up-ISTP), as the following: a) perceptual-auditory evaluation of the occurrence of hypernasality and CAs was performed by three experienced speech pathologists, upon the recordings of 12 sentences with recurrent high-pressure consonants, 3 sentences with recurrent low-pressure consonants (BrasilCleft protocol), counting of 1-20, and spontaneous speech; b) nasometry during the reading of a short text, consisting only of oral sounds (Oral Text), and 15 sentences with recurrent high and low pressure consonants (BrasilCleft protocol); c) long-term averaged spectra (LTAS), while reading the same 15 sentences used for nasometry. Results: the results of all evaluations (perceptual, nasometric, and LTAS) showed that most subjects improved their speech in the immediate post-ISTP, being able to maintain this improvement after a minimum of a six-month period after the end of the ISTP. Conclusions: a structured ISTP, combined with the use of a pharyngeal bulb, is a fast and efficient method for correcting speech disorders of patients with cleft lip and palate/ velopharyngeal dysfunction. Its results may remain stable after a long period of follow up. (AU)