[Speech intelligibility in tongue and mouth-floor cancer patients who received surgical excisions after induction therapy].

Speech intelligibility has been investigated in 40 patients who had received a glossotomy because of tongue and/or mouth floor carcinomas after preoperative induction therapy. The results are summarized below. 1. Speech was clearer and better understood in intelligibility tests than by tests of single sounds. 2. Speech intelligibility was impaired in 12 patients. The impairment degree was mild (slight difficulty in understanding the spoken content) in 9 cases, where as the speech in the remaining patients was moderately or severely impaired. 3. Hardly any speech impairment resulted when the tongue resection was limited to the ipsilateral 1/3 of the tongue, where as the impairment was greater in cases who received a glossotomy over that limit. 4. Tongue mobility was related to speech intelligibility, and conservation of the tongue tip appeared important. 5. Aggressive induction therapy made limited surgical extirpation possible, and many patients speech functions were well preserved by conservative surgery. Together with good local control, aggressive induction therapy seemed to be beneficial for tongue and mouth-floor carcinomas.