Is speech therapy useful as a complementary treatment for post-tonsillectomy pain?

Treating pediatric post‐tonsillectomy pain and nausea with complementary and alternative medicine

“…Post‐tonsillectomy pain is due in part to pharyngeal muscle spasm or contraction. Speech therapy can decrease muscle spasm by increasing blood flow and may improve pain …”

“…Speech therapy is used for rehabilitation of several laryngeal defects, cleft palate, and gingival defects, and has been shown to improve residual symptoms of OSA after tonsillectomy. 51,52 Post-tonsillectomy pain is due in part to pharyngeal muscle spasm or contraction. Speech therapy can decrease muscle spasm by increasing blood flow and may improve pain.…”

“…Speech therapy can decrease muscle spasm by increasing blood flow and may improve pain. 51 One RCT of 50 patients was performed in 2010 to examine the efficacy of speech therapy for post-tonsillectomy pain. 51 The group that performed speech therapy exercises involving the palate had significantly lower mean subjective pain scores than both the medicine only group and the group receiving nonpalate speech therapy.…”