Prevalence of tongue-tie and evaluation of speech sound disorder in young children

Abstract

Purpose: Tongue-tie is a common congenital abnormality whose effect on speech sound disorders is controversial. The first purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of tongue-tie in Persian speaking children aged 3–6 years. Second, compare the speech sound errors of children with tongue-tie with those of children without tongue-tie.Methods: 487 (206 female, 281 male) children aged 3–6 years were recruited for this study. Descriptive statistics were used to determine the prevalence of tongue-tie. Fisher’s exact test was performed to compare the speech sound errors of children with and without tongue-tie.Results: The prevalence of tongue-tie in children was 14.9%. These children showed a statistically significant difference in the production of the /s/, /z/, and /l/ sounds in both the initial and final positions of the word and the /t/ sound in the initial position of the word.Conclusions: While it is theoretically expected that the tongue-tie affects the production of anterior sounds, our clinical study shows speech sound disorder in only a limited number of cases. Therefore, it seems that surgical intervention on tongue-tie for sole purpose of speech improvement should be performed cautiously.