The prevalence of posterior tongue tie in patients with transverse maxillary deficiency
Article Category: research-article
Published Online: Oct 19, 2021
Page range: 294 - 300
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21307/aoj-2021.033
© 2021 Wakako Tome et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Objectives
To investigate the prevalence of posterior tongue tie in orthodontic patients using numerical and clinical assessment methods in order to identify an association between posterior tongue tie and transverse maxillary deficiency.
Materials and methods
Seventy-nine participants from an orthodontic clinic were divided into two groups. The first group of 44 patients exhibited a skeletally narrow maxilla and required maxillary skeletal expansion (MSE group) and 35 patients without a transverse discrepancy comprised a control group. Posterior tongue tie was examined by the Kotlow tongue tie classification, tongue range of motion ratio (TRMR) and via a clinical assessment. The prevalence of posterior tongue tie was compared between the two groups.
Results
There was no significant difference in the level of the Kotlow classification grade between the two groups (
Conclusions
A clinical assessment of posterior tongue tie was found to be simple and accurate, whereas a numerical assessment alone provided diagnostic difficulty. Considering the high prevalence of observed posterior tongue tie in the MSE group, there was a significant association between posterior tongue tie and transverse maxillary deficiency.