The effect of anterior esthetic fixed appliance of prematurely lost primary incisors on sound production and speech intelligibility

Aims This work aimed to compare the sound production and speech pattern in children with prematurely extracted anterior teeth after prosthetic rehabilitation with fixed functional space maintainer. Settings and design The study was conducted as a clinical trial. The clinical part was carried out at Pediatric Dentistry Department, Faculty of Dentistry, Tanta University and speech evaluation and assessment was done in Phoniatric Unit, ENT Department, Faculty of Medicine, Tanta University. Patients and methods Twenty-five children of both sexes aged from 3 to 6 years old were included in the study. The selected children were in need for extraction of maxillary primary incisors or had already got extracted and treated by anterior esthetic fixed appliance. Children attended for speech and language evaluation at before appliance delivery, immediately after appliance insertion, 7 days after appliance insertion, 14 days after appliance insertion and 1 month after appliance insertion. And they were evaluated by articulation test, speech intelligibility test, and spectrographic parameters. Statistical analysis used All test statistics were performed using the SPSS software statistical package and the significance was set at P value less than or equal to 0.05. Results There were statistically significant differences between follow up periods for/S/,/S/, and/Z/sounds but no statistically significant difference for/z/and/∫/sounds. The mean shimmer in dB, the mean absolute Jitter and the mean noise to harmonic ratio for the sounds were diminished after adaptation of the appliance. Also, high significant differences were found between 1 month after appliance insertion and all different follow up periods. No difference with immediately after appliance insertion. Conclusions Replacement of prematurely lost primary incisors with fixed prosthetic appliances will assist in the proper development and intelligibility of speech. Also, in accurate consonants sounds production as/s/,/s/,/z/,/∫/(alveolar fricatives), and/z/(dental fricatives).