Background: Classification systems in healthcare support shared understanding of conditions for clinical communication, service monitoring and development, and research. Children born with cleft palate with or without cleft lip (CP+/-L) are at high risk of developing cleft-related speech sound disorder (SSD). The way cleft-related SSD is…

Background: Adults presenting with unrepaired cleft palate are not a rare occurrence in middle-income countries. However, many surgeons are hesitant to operate on these individuals because of the challenges in repairing the wide adult cleft palate, as well as concerns regarding any improvement in speech in older patients. Unfortunately, the…

Background: Children with a cleft palate (with or without a cleft of the lip) often require speech--language therapy (SLT) services to achieve age-appropriate speech. For many children, this involves attending SLT services delivered by both specialised cleft team speech--language therapists (SLTs) and a local, community or school-based SLT. Given…

Background & Aim: To assess consonant proficiency and velopharyngeal function in 10-year-old children born with unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP) within the Scandcleft project. Methods & Procedures: Three parallel group, randomized, clinical trials were undertaken as an international multicentre study by nine cleft teams in five…

Background: The provision of speech intervention in children requires personalized, child-tailored approaches. Different speech-intervention approaches exist to eliminate cleft-related speech errors in children with a cleft palate. However, it is unclear what approach works best for the subtypes of cleft-related speech errors. Aims: To describe a…

Background: Ultrasound visual biofeedback (UVBF) has the potential to be useful for the treatment of compensatory errors in speakers with cleft palate ± lip (CP±L), but there is little research on its effectiveness, or on how acceptable families find the technique. This study reports on parents' and children's perspectives on taking part in a…

Background: Children born with cleft palate ± lip (CP ± L) are at risk of speech sound disorder (SSD). Up to 40% continue to have SSD at age 5-6 years. These difficulties are typically described as articulatory in nature and often include cleft speech characteristics (CSC) hypothesized to result from structural differences. In non-CP ± L SSD…

Background: At the beginning of the 21st century, international adoptions of children with cleft lip and/or palate increased dramatically in Sweden. Many children arrived partially or totally unoperated, despite being at an age when palatoplasty has usually been performed. To date, the speech development of internationally adopted (IA) children…

Background: Children with cleft palate with or without cleft lip (CP±L) are at high risk of problems with early speech sound production, and these difficulties can persist into later childhood. Early intervention could help to reduce the number of children whose problems become persistent. However, much research in the field to date has focused on…

Background: Speech development requires intact and adequately functioning oral anatomy and cognitive 'speech processing' skills. There is evidence that speech input processing skills are associated with speech output problems in children not born with a cleft. Children born with cleft palate ± lip (CP±L) are at high risk of developing disordered…

Background: Evidence-based speech therapy involves the integration of (1) the scientific evidence for therapy with (2) the perspectives of clinicians concerning therapy and (3) the perspectives of patients about therapy. The cleft literature has already paid attention to the first two cornerstones of evidence-based speech therapy. Much less is…

Background: Children born with a cleft palate with or without cleft lip (CP ± L) are known to be at risk for speech-language disorders that impact educational and social-emotional growth. It is hypothesized that speech-language intervention delivered before the age of 3 years could decrease the impact of CP ± L on speech-language development.…

Background: In children with a cleft palate with or without a cleft lip (CP±L), some evidence exists for superior results of high-intensity speech intervention (HISI) compared with low-intensity speech intervention (LISI) on speech and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). However, the existing research often involves small sample sizes.…

Background: Increasing attention is paid to the effectiveness of high-intensity speech intervention in children with a cleft (lip and) palate (CP±L). It is, however, unknown if high-intensity intervention is acceptable to the intervention recipients. Parents have an integral role in supporting their children with intervention highlighting the…

Background: The status of the velopharyngeal mechanism can be inferred from perceptual ratings of specified speech parameters. Several studies have proposed the measure of an overall velopharyngeal composite score based on these perceptual ratings and have reported good validity. The Cleft Audit Protocol for Speech--Augmented (CAPS-A) is a…