Factors influencing intelligibility and severity of chronic speech disorders of patients treated for oral or oropharyngeal cancer.

Purpose: Oral or oropharyngeal tumors degrade patients' speech quality because of their location. The treatment of these cancers also affects the functional outcomes, depending on type (surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy), volume resection (according the size of the tumor) or on the anatomical area treated, and the post-treatment delay. The aim of this work is to determine the factors influencing the chronic speech disorders (in terms of intelligibility and severity) of patients treated for an oral or oropharyngeal cancer.