Voice Perturbations in Repaired Cleft Lip and Palate

Abstract

Context: The speech of individuals with cleft lip and palate (CLP) is dominated by articulatory, resonatory and voice abnormalities. The research on voice abnormalities in CLP is not extensively studied despite high prevalence (9.2%) of hoarse voice in children with CLP.Aims: The current study is aimed at exploring the salient features of voice in children with CLP. The primary objective is to evaluate the jitter, shimmer and harmonic noise ratio measures in children with repaired cleft lip and palate (RCLP), age and gender matched typically developing children (TDC). The second objective is to compare the voice measures of RCLP with TDC.Settings and Design: The study is conducted in a clinical setting using standard group comparisons design.Methods and Material: The study included 49 participants (17 RCLP and 32 TDC) in the age range of 7 years to 13 years. The phonation of vowel /a/ and /i/ were recorded and considered as speech samples for voice evaluation. The PRAAT 5.1 software is used for acquiring local jitter%, local shimmer% and harmonic to noise ratio (HNR) measures.Statistical analysis used: Multivariate analysis is performed using SPSS Statistical Base 17.0 version was used.Results: The results indicated increased jitter and shimmer measures and reduced HNR measures in children with RCLP than TDC. However, the statistically significant differences were noticed only for jitter (P < 0.05) for the vowel /a/. Conclusion: The deviant spectral measures indicate that children with RCLP are prone to develop voice disturbance and need to be evaluated.