Acoustic analysis and speech intelligibility in patients wearing conventional dentures and rugae incorporated dentures.

Phonetics is an important function of oral cavity. It has been overlooked quite frequently while fabricating the complete dentures. In this study modification of anterior palatal surface of denture is done and assessed for its impact on phonetics. Purpose is to assess acoustic and speech intelligibility analysis in edentulous patients and also to evaluate the influence of conventional dentures, arbitrary rugae and customized rugae dentures on speech in complete denture wearers. Ten healthy edentulous patients 55-70 years of age were selected for the study. Dentures were fabricated in conventional way for these patients. Recordings were done for intelligibility and acoustic analysis of the speech. Recordings were done without denture, with conventional denture, with arbitrary rugae denture, with customized rugae denture. Each recording was done at an interval of 10 days period. All four recordings were analyzed and comparison was done using paired 't' test. There was significant improvement in frequency peak noise energy for 's', antiformant frequency for 'n' in rugae incorporated dentures. There was relative improvement in frequency peak noise energy for 'sh', frequency proximity burst, voice onset time for 'd', with rugae incorporated dentures. Findings of intelligibility analysis have shown substitution errors with conventional dentures. There was relative improvement of speech with rugae incorporated dentures. Among these, customized rugae dentures showed better results than arbitrary rugae dentures.