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Objective: The addition of a uvular flap (PFU) was hypothesized to improve outcomes over standard pharyngeal flap (PF) for correction of velopharyngeal dysfunction. We report differences in outcomes of PF vs PFU at our institution., Design: Retrospective cohort study., Setting: Tertiary children's hospital., Patients: Children who underwent PF or PFU with the three highest-volume surgeons at our institution in 2004-2017., Outcome Measures: We examined differences in complications between groups, frequency and type of revision surgery, and speech-related measures including nasometry, pressure-flow testing (PFT) and perceptual speech analysis (PSA)., Results: 160 patients were included, 41 PF and 119 PFU (including 18 with Hogan technique). Patients undergoing PFU were older (7.6 yr vs 6.0 yr; p  =  0.037) and more likely to have cleft palate (63/119 vs 14/41; p  =  0.047). There was no significant difference in complications. With PFU, a decrease in airspace contracting revision surgeries was noted, (4/119 vs 8/41; p  =  0.002) which drove a reduction in revision surgery of all types (7/119 vs 13/41; p  =  0.033). However, patients that did undergo revision surgery after PFU underwent more revision procedures (p  =  0.032). PSA scores were found to be lower (less hypernasal) after PFU (p  =  0.009) compared to PF. Objective speech measures had varying results, with nasometry demonstrating a significant difference between groups (p  =  0.001), while PFT (p  =  0.525) did not demonstrate a statistical difference., Conclusion: The use of a uvular lining flap in pharyngeal flap surgery may be associated with improved long term surgical outcomes, including both improvements in subjective and objective testing and a lower rate of revision surgery, without increased complications., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Objective: Velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI) is a common speech disorder in patients with a history of cleft palate (CP) or 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. Pharyngeal flap (PF) and sphincter pharyngoplasty (SP) are 2 common surgeries to treat this disorder by decreasing unwanted nasal air emission and hypernasal resonance. Because Eustachian tube dysfunction (ETD) in patients with CP may be more frequent after surgery for VPI, we examined whether ETD was associated with either type of surgery., Design: Retrospective cohort study., Setting: Children's hospital-based tertiary referral center., Patients: A total of 225 children with VPI who underwent primary PF (201) or SP (24) between 2006 and 2017., Outcome Measures: We examined differences in risk of ETD according to both surgical groups and proxies for postoperative nasal obstruction. These proxies included postoperative resonance measures and development of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)., Results: Both surgical groups had similar preoperative measures, except the PF group had higher hypernasality by PSA. Postoperatively, the PF group demonstrated lower hypernasal resonance by nasometry and PSA. There were no differences between PF and SP groups with regard to ETD. Proxies for postoperative nasal obstruction also were not predictive of postoperative ETD. Degree of CP and younger age were found to be risk factors for ETD., Conclusion: There was no significant difference in the effects of PF and SP on ETD in this study. Neither lower hypernasality nor incidence of OSA had any impact on ETD. Degree of CP and younger age were the only significant risk factors for ETD that this study identified.