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Background: Intelligibility refers to understandability of speech; and lack of it can negatively affect children’s overall communication effectiveness. Children with repaired cleft lip and/or cleft palate (CL/P) may experience poor speech intelligibility. This study aimed at evaluating speech intelligibility in children with repaired CL/P who had not been referred to speech-language pathology clinics for early intervention. Methods: Sixty-four monolingual Persian-speaking children, 32 children with repaired CL/P, and 32 controls aged 3 to 5 years participated in this survey. Their speech intelligibility was evaluated through the Persian Speech Intelligibility Test and was normalized on children 3 to 5 years. Each speech sample was heard by a speech and language pathologist (SLP), as well as 2 nonprofessional listeners. Two objective measures of speech intelligibility including Percentage of Consonants Correct (PCC) and Percentage of Intelligible Words (PIW) were used in this research. Results: Children with CL/P were significantly outperformed by their peers in PCC (p= 0.0001) and PIW (p= 0.0001). More than half of the case group had compensatory errors and 40.6% had obligatory errors. The PCC and the PIW were statistically different in children with different rates of hyper nasality (p= 0.001). Conclusion: Speech intelligibility of children with CL/P is impaired due to their articulation disorders (obligatory and compensatory errors). This survey documents the necessity for speech therapy for increasing speech intelligibility in this population.

Background:One of the most common anomalies in newborn infants is cleft lip and/or cleft palate (CL/P). In spite of several studies about the prevalence of this, no investigation evaluated this prevalence in the West and North-West of Iran. With due attention to different ethnic groups in this area, the aim of this study is to investigate whether the distribution of CL/P live births varies regionally in this area of Iran.Materials and Methods:A cross-sectional study was conducted using hospital registry records to identify all children born with CL/P. The hospitals with a maternity unit were selected in the capital cities of four provinces in the West and North-West of Iran, East Azarbaijan, Kurdestan, Gilan, and Markazi. The population under study included all infants born alive from 2008 to 2012.Results:During the study period, 107,317 live births were registered in the hospitals with a maternity unit of four cities, and 52 infants (0.485/1000 live births) were born with CL/P. The prevalence in Rasht, Arak, Sanandaj, and Tabriz cities was 0.557, 0.352, 0.503, and 0.559/1000 live births, respectively (P < 0.05), and in cleft types (P < 0.05). Of the 52 infants who were born with CL/P, 24 (46.15%) were girls and 28 (53.85%) were boys (P > 0.05), whereas the prevalence of CL/P based on sex was statistically different among the four provinces (P < 0.05).Conclusion:This study shows regional variations in the birth prevalence of clefts and various cleft types. The different effects of gender on the birth prevalence of CL/P from city-to-city may be explained environmentally and/or by genetic factors affecting the development of oral clefts.