<p>On children born with a complete cleft lip and palate (CLP) the repair of the alveolar ridge doesn´t take place before the children are about ten years old. This results in that they have a residual cleft in the alveolar ridge during their early childhood. This residual cleft, and the oronasal fistulas that may appear after the repair of the hard palate, can result in a negative influence on the speech of the children. Thereby it may be necessary with cover for examplewith a palatal plate or an obturator. At the Department of Orthodontics, at Linköping University Hospital, Sweden, some of the children with CLP undergo treatment with sustained palatal fistula obturation in order to cover fistulas or residual clefts. The aim of this study was to evaluate which effect this treatment has on the speech of the children. Outcome measures used were speech and caregivers opinion of the treatment. Potential relevant background factors as fistula size and timing of the treatment were investigated. This study included medical records, recordings of the speech of the children and dental study models of the maxilla from eleven children which had received treatment with sustained palatal fistula obturation. The parents of the children answered a parental report. In the perceptual evaluations of the speech recordings the results indicated that the articulation was improved after treatment in 81.8 % of the children and that the most common types of articulation errors before and after the orthodontic treatment were weak pressure consonants and retraction of dental plosives. It also appeared to be a connection between the age at which the children first had their obturator and how the speech was influenced. Regarding the parents ten of a total of eleven parents reported an improvement of their children´s speech- and/or eating ability and all of the parents would choose to let their children undergo the treatment again if they had the opportunity to choose. Conclusions drawn from this study is that treatment with sustained palatal fistula obturation is an applicable method for children with fistulas/residual clefts since most treated children´s speech benefitted from it.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:liu-15194 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Bengtsson, Ida |
| Publisher | Linköping University, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, text |
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