What is cleft lip and palate? What is glue ear? Patient stories Tests and procedures Consent

 

Endoscopy is an investigative teqhnique where a flexible
telescope is used to look inside the spaces in the body.

 

As its name implies, nasendoscopy is about looking into the nasal space to see from above how the palate works.

 

Cerys' Nasendoscopy

 

Here's what happend when Cerys had her nasendoscopy. In the picture above you can see the light from the endescope shining on Cerys' lip. Her mother stayed with her throughout the procedure.

 

 

 

Before starting to look up the nose, a little local anaestehtic is squirted up it so that the endoscope doesn't hurt when it goes up the nose.

 

In the next 2 pictures the nasendoscope is just starting to go up the nose, then up as far as it goes, which isn't very far at all!

 

 

Cerys is holding a microphone which records what she is saying for the speech therapists, and the movement of the palate is recorded on the video that you can see at the top of the right picture.

 

 

Nasendoscopy videos

The following video shows some of the aspects of the nasal space, including the adenoids at the back of the throat, the nasal septum, the turbinate bones, the upper side of the soft palate and the entry to the Eustachean Tube. You will find more about the function of the Eustachean Tube in the section on Glue Ear in Toby's story in the section when he goes to the Audiology department.

 

 

 

The second video shows Cerys saying a number of words and phrases. You can clearly see her soft palate working, but the fact that her soft palate doesn't close completely is demonstrated by bubbles coming through the gap which is not supposed to be there. The Team will use this endoscopy video together with other speech recordings and the x-ray videos, to plan the surgery that will make her palate work more efficiently.

 

 

This video is not so sharp as the first one because Cerys is younger and so smaller, so a much smaller endoscope has been used.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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