Hypernasal speech occurs when excessive air passes through the nose during speech.
Synonym: rhinolalia aperta
The patient is unable to produce vowels and consonants (oral sounds) correctly.
Causes of hypernasal speech may include:
(1) velopharyngeal insufficiency due to structural cause (cleft palate, adenoid atrophy, other)
(2) velopharyngeal incompetency due to neuromuscular cause (stroke, cerebral palsy, cranial nerve palsy, myasthenia, muscular dystrophy, other)
(3) velopharyngeal mislearning (associated with deafness or learned compensatory misarticulations)
(4) oronasal fistula or defect
Genetic syndromes with hypernasal speech:
(1) 22q11.2 deletion syndrome
(2) CHARGE syndrome
(3) Treacher Collins syndrome
(4) Nager syndrome
(5) BOR syndrome
(6) Turner syndrome
(7) Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome
(8) Stickler syndrome
(9) Kabuki syndrome
(10) Opitz G/BBB syndrome
(11) Jacobsen syndrome
(12) Robin sequence
(13) Prader-Willi syndrome
