PURPOSE: to check the effect of secondary palatoplasty performed with intravelar veloplasty on the nasality and nasalance of patients with repaired cleft palate and velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI) and compare the outcome among these patients, according to the degree of velopharyngeal closure as analyzed by nasopharyngoscopy. METHOD: prospective study with 40 patients of both genders, aged from 4 to 48 years, with repaired cleft palate and residual VPI, evaluated for 3 days before and 8 months after palatoplasty, on average, divided into two groups: one with 25 patients with minor defect (group I) and the other with 15 patients with medium to large defect (group II) in velopharyngeal closure. Hypernasality was evaluated perceptually and nasalance was assessed by nasometry. Differences between groups and stages were considered to be significant at the 5% level. The local Ethics Committee for Human Research approved the study. RESULTS: after surgery, we observed a reduction of hypernasality in 84% of the patients from group I, and in 73% of the patients from group II. Reduction of nasalance scores were observed in 52% of the group I cases and in 43% of the group II. CONCLUSION: secondary palatoplasty performed with intravelar veloplasty led to improvement in nasality in most of the analyzed patients. The results further demonstrated that surgery was more effective in patients with minor defects in velopharyngeal closure.
Speech; Cleft Palate; Velopharyngeal Insufficiency