Clinical crown length in 9-, 11- and 13-year-old children with and without finger-sucking habit.

Continuing finger-sucking often leads to an anterior open bite. The object of the present study was to attempt to illustrate whether this open bite is caused by an arrested eruption of incisors or primarily by inhibited growth of the alveolar processes. A comparison is made between 9-, 11- and 13-year-old children with continuing finger-sucking habits or who ceased finger-sucking only after 8 years of age, and children of the same ages without sucking habits in respect of the clinical crown length of central and lateral incisors in the upper and lower jaws. In all measurements the clinical crown length among children in the finger-sucking groups was greater than among children in the control groups (Table 1). The anterior open bite of the finger-suckers was therefore probably not caused by arrested eruption of incisors but rather by inhibited vertical growth of the anterior part of the alveolar processes.