Comparative study of three techniques of palatoplasty in patients with cleft of lip and palate via instrumental and auditory-perceptive evaluations

Introduction: Palatoplasty is a surgical procedure that aims at the reconstruction of the soft and/or hard palate. Actually, we dispose of different techniques that look for the bigger stretching of the soft palate joint to the nasofaryngeal wall to contribute in the appropriate operation of the velopharyngeal sphincter. Failure in its closing brings on speech dysfunctions. Objective: To compare the auditory-perceptive' evaluations and instrumental findings in patients with cleft lip and palate operate through three distinctive techniques of palatoplasty. Method: A prospective transversal study of a group of patients with complete unilateral cleft lip and palate. Everybody was subjected to a randomized clinical essay, through distinctive techniques of palatoplasty performed for a single surgeon, about 8 years. In the period of the surgery, the patients were divided in three distinctive groups with 10 participants each one. The present study has evaluates: 10 patients of the Furlow technique, 7 patients of the Veau-Wardill-Kilner+Braithwaite technique and, 9 patients of the Veau-Wardill-Kilner+Braithwaite+Zetaplasty technique; having a total sample of 26 individuals. All the patients were subjected to auditory-perceptive evaluation through speech recording. An instrumental evaluation was also performed through video endoscopy exam. Results: The findings were satisfactory in the three techniques, in other words, the majority of the individuals does not present hyper nasality, compensatory articulatory disturbance and audible nasal air emission. In addition, in the instrumental evaluation, the majority of the individuals of the three techniques of palatoplasty present an appropriate velopharyngeal function. Conclusion: Was not found statistically significant difference between the palatoplasty techniques in both evaluation