Ankyloglossia or Tongue Tie is a condition found by birth in babies that restricts the activities of the tongue.

Symptoms of Tongue-tie:

For Infants: Impact on milk supply Termination of breastfeeding, Baby failing to thrive, Poor bonding between baby and mother, Sleep deprivation Problems with introducing solids,  Gagging Acid reflux

Mothers negative concerns: Pain Nipple damage, bleeding, blanched/distortion of nipples, Mastitis, nipple thrush/blocked ducts, Severe pain with latch/losing latch, Clicking noise Depression, Sleep Deprivation, Children Inability to chew age-appropriate solid foods, Digestion equals growth and development concerns, Gagging, Choking or vomiting foods, Persisting food fads Difficulties, Cleaning teeth with tongue, Drooling/dribbling speech concerns, Behavior problems, Dental problems – mal-occlusion, Self-confidence, reduced feel different, Adults Inability to open mouth wide, affects speech and eating habits, Aware of their speech Inability to speak clearly with talking fast/loud/soft, Protrusion of lower jaws,  prognathism, Social situations, eating out, kissing, relationship concerns Sensitive about personal appearance.

Treatment for Tongue-tie

For decades, ‘Surgery’ has been a custom treatment for babies for the release of the tongue-tie. Several kinds of research of the recent era have revealed contradictory opinions about it, while a worldwide scene is an increase in tongue-tie surgery for removal of poor and painful breastfeeding and thereby causing insufficient weight gain. The researchers complain that the major cause of the painful low milk feeding is due to the low production of mother’s milk and frenotomies (tongue-tie surgery) may result in the early weaning of the baby. But in the case of an older child, surgery will be the answer to fix the anomaly.

Treatment for an older child with tongue-tie @ Jerush

This boy Robert, aged 12, came to our centre to get his tongue tie fixed. His parents know the issues from his birth and they put off the treatment since they found no issues in feeding and some pronunciation troubles. That itself is specifically for ‘sh’, ‘ph’ characters in a phrase. Our surgeon suggested surgery for fixing his tongue tie while the boy and his parents reciprocated it. It took only 25 minutes to carry out the procedure under general anesthesia. Then he was advised with a medication followed by speech therapy. He started doing speech therapy after 6 months and his parents were very happy with the improvement of their son’s speech. Robert enjoyed going to therapy for around 6 months till he could feel his speech is okay. Now he is a confident boy like his colleagues without having any feel that once he had pronunciation issues.