>To Rachel, and those interested in the incidence of tongue-tie:
>Anna Messner, an ENT from Stanford presented the results of a study looking
>at this at the American Society of Ped Otolaryngology in April of this year,
>and after looking at about 1000 infants born at Stanford, they estimated the
>incidence of ankyloglossia at 4.8% (with more males at almost  a 3:1ratio).
>Of these ones with tongue-tie they found that about one fourth of the
>breastfeeding ones had difficulty breastfeeding. They concluded that tongue
>tie is common, and that it may affect breastfeeding adversely.
>I don't know if this study has been accepted for publication. I would suppose
>it will, soon.
>Fritzi Drosten, RN IBCLC
>Stanford Lactation Center, Palo Alto, CA
>email at [log in to unmask]


That's very interesting...so tongue tie causes a prob in maybe 1.2 per cent
of cases.  So if you are based in hospital with 1000 deliveries a year,
you'd see one or two a month.

My experience/observation of tongue is the same as Rachel's -  in just
about 20 years I have seen only one case - yep, one! - where it seemed to
impact on feeding enough to warrant surgery, but I suspect I am not looking
enough or asking the right questions.  I talk/see maybe 200 women a year
with bf questions/worries/concerns, and maybe half of them have a difficult
feeder/sore nipple/hard to latch (I should do an audit some time - this is
top of head stuff) issue....but mostly it gets better with other measures,
and when it doesn't I explain it in other ways (delay in coming to the
breast, too many bottles, the usual stuff). It nearly always gets better
when I see the mother and work on positioning,  and over the years I have
got more skilled at this.

However, it could be that some of these extra challenging cases are tongue
tie, which maybe exacerbated the problem....I know I'm going to start
looking hard!

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc Newcastle upon Tyne UK

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