Diagnosis

Normally, the tongue-tie is diagnosed during the ordinary physical examination if we are talking about adults and children. Concerning infants, doctors normally examine their ability to move the tongue using a special screening tool.

How to cure…

There are different points of view of how to treat tongue-tie. Some people prefer to cure it immediately (at the first days of a baby’s life), others advise to wait and see what will be later; maybe no medical invasion is needed.

The lingual frenulum may loosen over time, resolving tongue-tie. But quite often tongue-tie causes no problems.

However, if tongue-tie causes problems sometimes surgery is needed. These two surgical procedures might be done: frenotomy and frenuloplasty.

Frenotomy

Frenotomy is a simple surgical procedure. It requires only medical scissors and no anesthesia. As we said the procedure is so simple and fast so that there is no pain and no blood.

Like with every surgery you should be attentive and choose the professional as there are common risks to bleed, tongue damage, or to get an infection.

Frenuloplasty

Frenuloplasty is conducted when the lingual frenulum is too thick for a frenotomy. Frenuloplasty is a more complicated procedure – it requires surgical tools and as it is painful anesthesia is essential.

After the surgery tongue exercises might be prescribed to make the tongue move as normal.

All the possible risks are the same as with frenotomy.

Before the surgery people have to know who their doctor is, so you can ask the following questions:

- What is the procedure?

- What are the possible risks?

- Does it take any recovery? What do I need to do after the surgery?

- Do I need anesthesia?

- Do I need to get tested by other professionals before undergoing surgery?

The real professional will also ask you some questions such as: Do you face problems pronouncing sounds? Are there are any activities that you cannot conduct because of your tongue? And many others.