A comparison of the speech results after early and delayed hard palate closure; a preliminary report.

An "early surgery" and a "delayed surgery" group of cleft palate cases' speech has been recorded and judged in two ways. Initially four different listener groups gave their "impressions" of the speech samples followed by the two speech therapist groups assessing specific aspects of speech. For analytical purposes the delayed surgery group was divided into "repaired" and "unrepaired" hard palate groups. The general conclusion was that delaying hard palate surgery may be responsible for the persistence of noticeable abnormal speech patterns until after hard palate repair. However, despite their higher frequency in the "delayed unrepaired" group, errors of tongue placement and airstream direction were common to all groups. The relative influence of maturation, surgery and speech therapy on speech progress has not been considered. It is suggested that a final review of oro-facial growth and speech as each subject reaches 17 years old would give more definitive results. Then the subjects might discuss the relative importance of facial appearance and speech results.