Dentists and lactation consultations have touted cutting babies' "tongue-ties" for years, but the increasingly popular operation has little efficacy research to back it up, The New York Times reported Dec. 18.
A small proportion of children are born with tissue that connects the tip of their tongue to the bottom of their mouth, and most of these tongue-ties are harmless. Cutting the bundle of nerves in the hopes of improving breastfeeding has been in practice since at least the 15th century.
For centuries, too, healthcare workers have raised concerns about the practice.
The invention of mass-produced formula in the 1900s caused the debates about cutting tongue-ties to dwindle, but in 1970, breastfeeding made a comeback, the Times reported. Lactation consultants like Alison Hazelbaker, PhD, emerged to help babies learn to use their tongues to extract milk. In 1993, Dr. Hazelbaker created a tongue-tie assessment tool that is still used today.
About a decade later, an article in the American Academy of Pediatrics' newsletter suggested more babies could benefit from snips at the back of the tongue and tissues connecting the lips and gums.
That's when "everything started to go to hell in a handbasket," Dr. Hazelbaker told the Times.
Tongue-tie cuts in hospitals — a small proportion of the total — grew more than 800% across the U.S. between 1997 and 2012, according to one study. Requests for tongue-tie consultations are overwhelming the schedules of ear, nose and throat specialists; thousands of Facebook accounts have joined tongue-tie groups; and Google searches for "tongue tie" reached a record high in June.
"I have huge concerns," Catherine Watson Genna, a New York lactation consultant who co-wrote the newsletter article, told the Times. "Everything looks like a nail because everybody's got a hammer now."
Some of these procedures are leading to the opposite of the intended result: an unknown number of postoperative babies still cannot breastfeed, and are hospitalized and need a feeding tube because of complications.
Read more here.