A more detailed evaluation will follow during your child s Team visit. If an air leak is detected, either a videofluoroscopy or nasoendoscopy will be performed. This is an X ray technique utilized to view the movement of the soft palate while your child is speaking. This X ray examination allows the speech pathologist and the plastic surgeon to view the movement of the soft palate and determine whether air is escaping behind the soft palate. This procedure involves passing an extremely thin flexible tube through your child s nose and looking at the soft palate while your child is speaking.
Surgical intervention involves an operation.
The pharyngeal flap, sphincter pharyngoplasty and palatal lengthening procedures are procedures which can help this problem to reduce the air leak behind the repaired soft palate, thereby improving the speech. A submucous cleft is a mild variety of incomplete cleft palate. In a submucous cleft palate the mucosal seam in the soft palate appears intact. However the muscles forming the sling in the soft palate may be abnormal. This may manifest itself as velopharyngeal incompetence with air escaping behind the soft palate.