Hattori Mariko, Sumita Yuka, Taniguchi Hisashi
Clinics for Oral and Maxillofacial Rehabilitation, University Hospital, Faculty of Dentistry, Tokyo Medical and Dental University.
Kokubyo Gakkai Zasshi. 2013 Jun;80(2):49-53.
Speech evaluation is essential to the rehabilitation of maxillectomy patients. A speech intelligibility test has been frequently used for the evaluation because of its simplicity. However, the test needs human listeners and this has been a shortcoming of the test. Thus, objective evaluation methods have been discussed. One of them is formant analysis for vowel evaluation and another is psychoacoustic analysis for consonants. In this research, to evaluate the speech in five maxillectomy patients, the F2-range was examined as formant analysis and the sharpness of /sa/ was examined as psychoacoustic analysis, in addition to the speech intelligibility test, during the fabrication process of a hollow-type obturator. The objective evaluation of patients' speech was effectively performed using those three methods. The F2-range was larger, the sharpness of /sa/ was higher and the speech intelligibility was higher when patients wore an obturator compared to when patients did not wear an obturator. The difference in speech when changing the types of obturator was not clear. The method and the findings are important for future research in this field, since speech is one of the important factors in maxillofacial rehabilitation.
言语评估对于上颌骨切除术患者的康复至关重要。由于其简单性，言语可懂度测试经常被用于评估。然而，该测试需要人工听众，这一直是该测试的一个缺点。因此，人们对客观评估方法进行了讨论。其中一种是用于元音评估的共振峰分析，另一种是用于辅音的心理声学分析。在本研究中，为了评估五名上颌骨切除术患者的言语，在中空型阻塞器的制作过程中，除了言语可懂度测试外，还将F2范围作为共振峰分析进行了检查，并将/sa/的清晰度作为心理声学分析进行了检查。使用这三种方法有效地对患者的言语进行了客观评估。与未佩戴阻塞器时相比，患者佩戴阻塞器时F2范围更大，/sa/的清晰度更高，言语可懂度也更高。更换阻塞器类型时言语的差异不明显。由于言语是颌面康复的重要因素之一，该方法和研究结果对该领域未来的研究具有重要意义。
