Ghulam Saqulain, Nazia Mumtaz, Jawwad Ahmed.
Evaluation of outcome of Palatoplasty in patients with Isolated Cleft Palate Defect: a Retrospective Observational study.
Isra Med J Jan ;13(2):119-22.

Objective: To evaluate the outcome of palatoplasty in terms of closure of velopharyngeal gap and correction of speech in patients with isolated cleft palate. Study Design: Retrospective observational study. Place and Duration: ENT Department, Capital Hospital PGMI, Islamabad, Pakistan, from 1 st January 2016 to 31st December 2017. Methodology: Medical record of patients with isolated cleft palate having undergone palatoplasty from both genders aged 1-12 years were reviewed for demographic and clinical information. Data collected including age, gender, cleft type, age at palatoplasty, type of palatoplasty, post-palatoplasty velopharyngeal gap and pre and 6 months post-operative speech. Results: Among total of 32 patients, good repair with palatoplasty was achieved in 68.8% cases and 31.3% were left with large velopharyngeal gap with significantly better repair results for secondary cleft compared to primary with p=0.002. In the <1 year age group post-operative velopharyngeal gap was normal while in the 1 to 4 year age group out of 26, 6 had large and 4 had moderate velopharyngeal gap (p=0.012). Results also revealed significant ((p=0.01) improvement in speech results compared to pre-operative speech with significantly better results (p=0.007) for secondary cleft. Conclusion: Age at palatoplasty has significant association with velopharyngeal gap/ insufficiency (p=0.012), while it has no significant association with speech results (p=0.415) especially when comparing <1 year and 1-4 years age group.

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