The association between dental arch dimensions and occurrence of Finnish dental consonant misarticulations in cleft lip/palate children.

The aim of this study was to examine whether maxillary and mandibular dental arch width, length, and palatal height dimensions are associated with the occurrence of misarticulations (phonetic or phonologic errors) in the dental consonants /r/, /s/, and /1/ in different cleft types and sexes. The subjects were 263 (109 girls, 154 boys) 6-year-old Finnish-speaking non-syndromic children with isolated cleft palate (CP, n=79), deft lip/alveolus (CL(A), n=77), unilateral (UCLP, n=80), and bilateral (BCLP, n=27) cleft lip and palate. Dental plaster casts were measured by two authors using the technique of Moorrees, and auditive speech was analyzed with high reliability by two speech pathologists. The results showed that the occurrence of misarticulations increased and dental arch dimensions decreased with the severity of the cleft. Narrower and shorter maxillary arches as well as shallower palates were related to problems with the studied dental consonants. Mandibular arch dimensions were not related to the misarticulations. However, statistical analysis did not reveal significant differences in dental arch dimensions between subjects with and without misarticulations when they were compared separately for different cleft types. The etiology of clefting per se--isolated deft palate versus cleft lip with or without deft palate--did not seem to explain the associations between dental arch dimensions and the studied misarticulations.