Speech results of the Zürich approach in the treatment of unilateral cleft lip and palate.

The purpose of this study was to describe perceptually the speech articulation, voice quality, and velopharyngeal competency of subjects with complete unilateral cleft lip and palate treated by the Zürich approach. The mean age of the 37 subjects was 10.5 years. Although only one subject had had secondary palatal management, no subject was rated as exhibiting a severe articulation or nasality problem. Subjects were rated as exhibiting adequate to marginal velopharyngeal competency 94.5 percent of the time, and the incidence of compensatory articulation errors was low. In comparison with other studies that evaluated the two-stage palatal repair, the Zürich approach appears to give the better results. The type of initial soft palate repair is probably the significant factor which contributes to the better speech of these subjects.