Avaliação da nasalidade de fala na fissura labiopalatina

Purpose To describe the results of speech nasality of individuals with cleft lip and palate, and to compare auditory-perceptual judgments of nasality between live ratings and multiple judges ratings of recorded speech, for two sets of speech stimuli. Methods The study involved the retrospective analysis of the results of auditory-perceptual assessments of speech nasality performed live by a single speech-language pathologist and a prospective judgment of 100 recordings of speech samples obtained during production of two sets of speech stimuli: one with high pressure consonants (HPC, n=100) and another with low pressure consonants (LPC, n=100). The data belonged to patients, of both genders, with ages between 5 and 12 years, with cleft lip and palate operated by the same surgeon. Results The absence of hypernasality was found for 69% of the patients during live assessment. When present, mild hypernasality was found for 23% and moderate for 8% of the patients. For judge ratings of recorded samples, 50% was identified as hypernasal during production of samples with high pressure consonants, and 62% for the samples with low pressure consonants. A statistically significant difference was found between the live perceptual judgments and judges’ ratings of the recorded samples only for the stimuli with high pressure consonants. The agreement between the methods of assessment was 79% for HPC samples and 80% for LPC samples, within the moderate range. Conclusion Live perceptual judgment of speech nasality revealed higher occurrence of absence of hypernasality followed by presence of mild hypernasality, when compared to multiple judges of recorded samples. The live clinical assessment of speech, however, has the disadvantage that the data may not be reproduced, quantified or shared by other team members.