Tongue Tie Treatment in Koramangala, Bengaluru

Most tongue ties should be left alone

This is the part of the page that matters most, so it goes first.

Tongue tie has become a fashionable diagnosis, and there is real money in treating it. A band of tissue under the tongue that looks short is not a condition. It becomes one only when it stops the tongue doing something the tongue is supposed to do, and in most mouths it does not.

So the assessment here is a function test, not a look. Can the tongue lift to the roof of the mouth with the jaw open? Can it sweep to both cheeks? Does the tip notch or pull into a heart shape when it rises? Is the gum behind the lower front teeth being dragged on every time it moves?

If the answers are fine, you will be told to leave it, and that is the end of it. Dr. Chaitanya K sees a reasonable number of people who have been told elsewhere that a release is needed and who do not need one.

When it is genuinely worth releasing

There are four reasons that hold up.

Speech. The sounds that need the tongue to reach the palate are the ones that suffer, so l, r, t, d, n, s and th are where it shows. This is the reason that needs the most care, because a tongue tie is not the most common cause of unclear speech and releasing one that was never the problem changes nothing. Where speech is the reason, a speech therapist’s assessment should come first.

Gum recession behind the lower front teeth. A frenum attached high on the gum pulls on the margin thousands of times a day. The gum gives way slowly, the root becomes exposed, and it does not grow back. This one is usually found at a routine examination rather than reported, and it is the reason most likely to be genuinely urgent.

Cleaning. The tongue is the mouth’s own sweep. One that cannot reach sideways leaves food packed along the same stretch of gum line every day, and you see it as plaque in the identical places at every cleaning appointment.

A gap that relapses. Occasionally an attachment is holding a space open between the lower front teeth, and orthodontic work will close it and then watch it reopen. Where that is the case, the release is part of the orthodontic plan rather than a separate decision.

What the release actually involves

It is a short appointment under local anaesthesia, the same injection used for a filling.

A thin band is divided. A thicker one, or one attached high on the gum, is divided and then repositioned, with fine sutures so it heals where it has been put rather than reattaching in its old position. That second version is the more common of the two in adults and it is the reason this is not a two-minute procedure.

Before you leave, the tongue is put through exactly the same movements as at the assessment, so both of us can see what changed rather than assuming.

Who does it is not a detail. Dividing and repositioning tissue under the tongue, where the floor of the mouth and the salivary ducts are, is minor oral surgery. It is done here by Dr. Akshay, the clinic’s oral and maxillofacial surgeon, which is the surgical speciality of dentistry. Dr. Chaitanya K assesses, agrees what the release is for, and plans it. That division of work is the same one used for surgical wisdom tooth removal, and it exists for the same reason.

The stretches are the treatment

This is where results are won and lost, and it is the part nobody is warned about properly.

A healing wound under the tongue wants to close, and closing means the two cut surfaces finding each other again. If they do, you are back where you started, having paid for surgery. What stops it is moving the tongue deliberately through its new range, several times a day, for several weeks, on the schedule you are shown before you leave.

They are uncomfortable. People skip them for that reason, and skipping them is the single most common cause of a release that has to be done twice.

The review appointment about a week later exists for the same reason. Reattachment caught then is a small problem. Caught six months later it usually means starting again.

Release is half of it, at most

If the release was done for speech, the physical restriction is gone but the habit is not. Sounds that have been made a certain way for years are made that way out of learning, not anatomy, and that takes a speech therapist and practice to change.

If it was done for gum recession, the pull is gone but the gum that has already receded does not come back on its own. What the release does is stop it getting worse, and whether anything should be done about what is already lost is a separate conversation, usually with the clinic’s periodontists as part of gum treatment.

Anyone who tells you the cut fixes everything by itself is selling you the cut.

Where we are

Tooth District is in S.T Bed Layout, Koramangala 4th Block, on Koramangala 1st Main Road just off 80 Feet Road. The clinic is open on Sunday and closed on Wednesday.

If somebody has told you or your child that a tongue tie needs releasing, a second opinion costs one appointment, and a fair number of them end with us saying it does not.