The Relationship between Age and Speech Improvement in the Patients Performed Pharyngeal Flap for Correction of Velopharyngeal Dysfunction.

Purpose: The pharyngeal flap is one of the popular surgical methods to treat the problem of velopharyngeal dysfunction. This study evaluated speech outcome of patients who underwent superiorly based pharyngeal flap surgery based on timing of surgery. Methods: A restrospective review of 50 patients who underwent pharyngeal flap surgery for velopharyngeal insufficiency from September 1996 to January 2008 was undertaken. Thirty patients with an available preoprative and postoperative speech assessments with at least 6 months of follow-up were included in this study. We checked out the significance of speech improvement after surgery analysing preoperative and postoperative scoring of speech assessment. We also investigated the direct relationship between the age at surgery and the degree of speech improvement, and the improvement score in different age groups. Results: The mean score of preoperative speech was 52.67.4 points and postoperative speech was 58.66.5 points, which presented significant postoperative speech improvement with an average of 5.9 points (p