BACKGROUND The perceptual assessment of velopharyngeal function during speech presents some limitations due to its subjectivity. AIM To propose a method for velopharyngeal function rating based on hypernasality, nasal air emission and compensatory articulation deficits scores. CONCLUSION The proposed method shows several advantages in terms of clinical and research documentation and for an ...

Automatic tools to detect hypernasality have been traditionally designed analyze sustained vowels exclusively. This is in sharp contrast with clinical recommendations, which consider it necessary use a variety of utterance types (e.g., repeated syllables, sounds, sentences, etc.) study explores the feasibility detecting automatically based on speech samples other than vowels. The participants w...

As we have just seen, speech impairment is one of the most common findings in VCFS, occurring in at least 70% of cases (Shprintzen & Golding-Kushner, 2009). In this chapter, we discuss the sequelae, diagnosis, and management of velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI), the disorder that leads to hypernasality. Articulation and language impairment are discussed in terms of their interrelationship with...

We propose a novel approach for the automatic assessment of hypernasality in the speech of children with cleft lip and palate. Our system is based on short-time features as well as on large-scale features. It is compared to the perceptive evaluation of two experienced speech therapists. While the correlation between the scores of the speech therapists is 0.80 the correlation between the composi...

Adenoidectomy and tonsillectomy are the most common major operations done on children. The indications for tonsillectomy in certain clinical situations are constantly being debated in the literature and among professionals. We studied the efficacy (or lack of it) of adenotonsillectomy for chronic tonsillitis (recurrent throat infections), oral nasal obstruction, peritonsillar abscess, eliminati...