Usually, most cleft palate patients treated adequately at their primary stage will have satisfactory speech. However, for those of them who don’t, a secondary palatoplasty will have to be done and that brings their speech almost like a normal individual. Case: We had an adult male patient(32yrs) walk into the clinic one day accompanied by his brother who said that no one could comprehend his brother’s speech.
We found that he had a repaired cleft palate and in-spite of that his speech was hypernasal and incomprehensible. We performed a perceptual speech evaluation on him as well as a lateral videofluoroscopy was done and he was confirmed to have velopharyngeal incompetence. We decided to perform a Furlow’s Palatoplasty procedure which ensures that the muscles of the soft palate which help in the formation of the velopharyngeal seal important for the production of sounds are placed in…
