The speech abilities and quality of life of Malaysian school-aged children with cleft lip and palate

Abstract

Purposes

The study investigated the relationship between speech outcomes and quality of life (QoL) among Malay-speaking school-aged children with CLP.

Methodology

Forty-nine children with CLP (age range 7–11 years) completed an online or in-person speech assessment and filled in the CLEFT-Q (Malay Version) questionnaire, which assessed QoL. An experienced SLP rated the nasality and speech intelligibility of the patients’ speech samples.

Results

Based on the auditory-perceptual ratings, 63.3 % of the children had normal resonance, and 71.5 % had normal or near-normal speech intelligibility. The appearance of “teeth'' was rated as the poorest feature by all participants (52.71), while “psychological function” was rated as the best outcome (83.49). Weak correlations were found between speech intelligibility and speech distress (r = −0.450, p < 0.001), speech intelligibility and speech function (r = −0.370, p < 0.05), hypernasality and speech distress (r = −0.474, p < 0.001), and hypernasality and speech function (r = −0.308, p < 0.05).

Conclusion

Many children with CLP still presented with speech difficulties at school age and facial appearance dissatisfaction in the present study. However, the children's self-awareness of their speech difficulties did not negatively affect non-speech-related aspects of their QoL.