Abstract
Whether or not the tongue should be reconstructed with a pectoralis major myocutaneous island flap, during hemiglossectomy with ipsilateral radical neck dissection, in patients with a localized tongue cancer (T2N0M0), has been the cause of much controversy with regard to the effects on vowel formants. To compare the effects on vowel formants, we reviewed the phonetic records of 3 patients having the tongue reconstructed with a pectoralis major myocutaneous island flap, and of 2 patients with hemiglossectomy alone. At periodic intervals after surgery, patients' voices were recorded on a SONY tape re-corder and analyzed by a KAY sound spectrogram. Intelligibility tests using a confusion matrix of 100 words were also performed. F1-F2 plots (Fant G, 1960 and Peterson E, 1951) and isovowel lines of the vowels, /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/ and /u/ for a group of normal subjects, and for the glossectomy subjects in both resection alone and reconstruction cases are presented. We found that recovery from abnormal to normal vowel pronunciation progressed during the stable stage and termination of the postoperative cicatricial healing of wounds, both in patients with resection alone and reconstruction, although acoustic and perceptual characteristics of consonants did not show a marked difference when comparing the immediate postoperative stage to the present.
