Effect of prematurely primary front teeth loss with anterior esthetic fixed appliance on fricative production in Arabic-speaking children

Abstract Background Primary teeth affect the life quality regarding chewing, speech production, esthetics, and psychological well-being. Young children usually lose their primary maxillary incisors due to trauma or care and that leads to fault production of alveolar and dental fricatives. Fixed esthetic appliance replacing the lost primary front teeth were inserted and fricative sounds /s/,/ s /,/∫ /,/z/and / z / were tested before and after insertion of the fixed appliance through different time intervals. Results Improvement of fricative sound production occurred after fixed appliance insertion the /s/ sound, followed by / s / sound showed immediate improvement while the /∫ / sound was the least to be improved even after 1 month duration. Both sounds / z / and /z/ sound showed distortion immediately. Conclusion Premature loss of primary incisors in young children has a significant impact on speech production.