Intelligibilité de la parole après glossectomie totale et réhabilitation
Florence Fauvet, Philippe Schultz, Christian Debry, Fabrice Hirsch, Rudolph Sock.

This paper reports the monitoring and treatment of speech and its intelligibility following total glossectomy. A very early speech therapy rehabilitation in the post-operative course was initiated in a complex case of oral cavity surgery. Training was directly based on respiration, on mobility of articulators and on variations of the vocal tract volume for future production of consonants and vowels. The patient quickly recovered sufficient phonation capabilities to communicate with his relatives and medical staff. Although speech therapy and self-training ended progressively after being discharged from hospital, speech was registered at different periods after rehabilitation. Spontaneous speech evaluation shows improvement of speech intelligibility and pronunciation. In such a case, accurate phonetics data have opened new therapeutic perspectives.