A Study of Speech Intelligibility after Glossectomy -Analysis of 60 tongue Cancer Cases-

Abstract

The present study was designed to appraise sixty glossectomee’s articulatory abilities. The methods used for an assessment of articulatory abilities were to compare the reading ability of short story and 100 Japanese monosylables with five normal volunteers who had no special training, and also to evaluate the volume of the reconstructed tongue and its mobilities. The following results were obtained. 1) As excision area became wider and deeper, lesser speech intelligibility resulted. 2) When the surgery extended greater than hemiglossectomy, speech intelligibility of the patients group to whom tongue was reconstructed with Pectoralis Major Myo-cutaneous (PM-MC) Flap was better than that of non-reconstructed patients group. 3) Until six months postoperatively, the group reconstructed with PM-MC flap gradually gained fine improvement in speech intelligibility and then reached the plateau state. In two cases with PM-MC reconstruction, their speech intelligibility again became worse slightly with the loss of tongue volume. 4) The articulatory disorders of glossectomees were characterized dy misarticulations of alveolar and velar plosives. These sounds were often confnsed with fricatives or affricates in the manner of articulation and as bilabials or glottals in the point of articulation. Malocclusion, paresis of mandibular branch of seventh nerve and drooling were also the other additional factors to worsen speech intelligibility. 5) In the present series, most of the patients with more than seventy percent score in speech discrimination test were well rehabilitated to their social life, but not as well with lesser scores. © 1985, The Japan Society of Logopedics and Phoniatrics. All rights reserved.