抄録
As one of the simple clinical measures of velopharyngeal function in the cleft palate patients, we use“blowing ratio” which is the ratio of soft-blowing time with open nostrils to that with closed nostrils, we also use“nasal emission ratio”, the ratio of the number of the syllables with nasal emission to the total number of syllables examined in articulation test. In order to investigate the validity of the blowing ratio, correlation between the blowing ratio and the nasal emission ratio was examined. The subjects were 22 post-operative cleft palate patients whose average age was 13. The result revealed that the blowing ratio and nasal emission ratio were well correlated in the subjects whose articulation manners were normal, although their correlation was nonsignificant for the patients with abnormal manners of articulation.
We concluded from this result that the blowing ratio can be used as a diagnostic measure in order to assess the velopharyngeal function quantitatively.
