2013 Volume 5 Issue 1 Pages 56-64
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to compare the speech intelligibility between the immediate surgical obturator and the definitive obturator in Aramany class II cases.
Methods: Ten maxillectomy patients in Aramany class II participated in this study. A speech intelligibility test with a 100 monosyllable Japanese intelligibility test sheet was carried out two times for each patient. The intelligibility with immediate surgical obturator and the intelligibility with definitive obturator were analyzed. The correcting rate of consonants were also analyzed.
Results: The intelligibility with an immediate surgical obturator was 86.8%, and the intelligibility with definitive obturator was 89.2%. The significant difference was found between the immediate surgical obturators and the definitive obturators in dental consonants by the place of articulation classification (p=0.03).
Conclusion: Not only the definitive obturator, but also the immediate surgical obturator is effective to improve the speech impairment for the maxillectomy patients in Aramany class II. However, the intelligibility of dental consonants are not as improved by the immediate surgical obturator as by the definitive obturator.
