Surgery for Velopharyngeal Dysfunction: A Systematic Review of Interventions and Outcomes

Abstract

Objective: This systematic review sought to evaluate the consensus in the literature regarding the surgical management of VPD and to determine whether a particular procedure results in superior speech outcome or less morbidity Design: A systematic review was carried out according to PRISMA-P guidelines. Systematic review software was used to facilitate 3-stage screening and data extraction by 2 reviewers.

Setting: University teaching hospital.

Patients, participants: Studies that reported perceptual speech assessment or obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in patients who had undergone surgery for VPD were included in the review.

Interventions: Four categories of surgery for VPD were examined-pharyngeal flap, sphincter pharyngoplasty, palatoplasty, and posterior pharyngeal wall augmentation.

Main outcome measures: Perceptual speech assessment, need for further surgery, and occurrence of OSA were the outcomes of interest.

Results: Eighty-three relevant studies were identified, comprising data on 4011 patients. Pharyngeal flap was the most common procedure (64% of patients). Overall, 70.7% of patients attained normal resonance and 65.3% attained normal nasal emission. There was no notable difference in speech outcomes, need for further surgery, or occurrence of OSA across the 4 categories of surgery examined. Heterogeneous groups of patients were reported upon and a variety of perceptual speech assessment scales were used.

Conclusions: There is a lack of consensus in the literature to guide procedure selection for patients with VPD. The development of a standardized minimum data set to record postoperative speech, OSA, and patient-reported outcomes is required.

Keywords: obstructive sleep apnea; perceptual speech assessment; systematic review; velopharyngeal dysfunction.