Cohort study reveals preoperative speech deficits predict postoperative mutism in pediatric brain tumor patients, highlighting early screening and prehabilitation potential.
Key Points
To determine whether preoperative motor-speech abnormalities are linked to the development of postoperative speech impairment in pediatric patients undergoing posterior fossa tumor resection.
Analyzed narrative speech recordings from N=135 children within the European Study of Cerebellar Mutism Syndrome across three cohorts: 16 patients who developed postoperative speech impairment, 62 patients with habitual postoperative speech, and 57 healthy controls.
Four speech-language therapists rated 23 perceptual motor-speech features encompassing resonance, phonation-respiration, prosody, and articulation.
Patients who later developed postoperative speech impairment exhibited significantly worse preoperative hypernasality and phonation-respiration deficits (including hoarse, strained, and leaky voice) compared to patients maintaining habitual speech.
Prosodic and articulatory impairments were significantly more pronounced in future speech-impaired patients relative to healthy controls, with younger age significantly correlating with greater symptom severity.