Dr. Nick A. Prater has been a pediatric dentist for over 40 years and has dedicated his career to helping children along with training orthodontists. As part of this work, Dr. Nick A. Prater has treated over 5000 children with lip and tongue ties, and he often uses laser dentistry in these procedures.
If a child has a lip or tongue tie, it means that their lip or tongue is attached too tightly, limiting the movement of the lip or tongue. This can keep a baby from latching properly while breastfeeding, and it can also cause long-term problems with speech and tooth decay. For many years these procedures were done with regular surgical instruments, but in recent decades lasers have been the tool of choice for dental surgeons.
Laser dentistry is much less invasive and causes less discomfort than traditional surgical methods for lip and tongue ties. In the case of tongue ties, instead of using a scalpel to cut the frenulum (the tissue that attaches the tongue to the floor of the mouth) to allow greater tongue movement, a laser is used to quickly and easily do the job. This typically causes much less bleeding and discomfort, and also results in a much quicker healing process. As the mouth has efficient regenerative abilities, mouth exercises should be done consistently after this procedure to ensure the tie does not re-heal.
Nick A Prater 