• Archives of Craniofacial Surgery
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.314-318
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• 2019

Macroglossia is a rare clinical condition defined as an enlarged tongue. Macroglossia can cause structural deformities like diastema and disproportionate mandibular growth and present functional disorders such as dysarthria, dysphonia, and respiratory problems. A 7-year-old boy who had lymphangiomatous macroglossia was treated with a reduction glossectomy by anchor-shaped combination of a U-shape and modified key-hole resection. Postoperatively, the reduced tongue was contained completely within the oral cavity, but open bite remained due to prognathism. Sensory and motor nerves to the tongue appeared to be intact, and circulation was adequate. This patient will be monitored for recurrence of tongue enlargement.

• Korean Journal of Oriental Medicine
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• v.13 no.2 s.20
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• pp.47-52
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• 2007

In Oriental medicine, the status of tongue is the important indicator to diagnose one's health, because it represents physiological and clinicopathological changes of inner parts of the body. The method of tongue diagnosis is not only convenient but also non-invasive, therefore, tongue diagnosis is one of the most widely used in Oriental medicine. But tongue diagnosis is affected by examination circumstances a lot. It depends on a light source, degrees of an angle, doctor's condition and so on. So it is not easy to make an objective and standardized tongue diagnosis. As part of way to solve this problem, in this study, we tried to design a discriminant function for white and yellow coating with multi-dimensional color vectors. There were 62 subjects involved in this study, among them 48 subjects diagnosed as white-coated tongue and 14 subjects diagnosed as yellow-coated tongue by oriental doctors. And their tongue images were acquired by a well-made Digital Tongue Diagnosis System. From those acquired tongue images, each coating section were extracted by oriental doctors, and then mean values of multi -dimensional color vectors in each coating section were calculated. By statistical analysis, two significant vectors, R in RGB space and H in HSV space, were found that they were able to describe the difference between white coating section and yellow coating section very well. Using these two values, we designed the discriminant function for coating classification and examined how good it works. As a result, the overall accuracy of coating classification was 98.4%. We can expect that the discriminant function for other coatings can be obtained in a similar way. Furthermore, if an automated segmentation algorithm of tongue coating is combined with these discriminant functions, an automated tongue coating diagnosis can be accomplished.

• The Journal of Korea Assosiation for Disability and Oral Health
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.22-25
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• 2012

Hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy(HIE) is a condition that occurs when the entire brain is deprived of an adequate oxygen supply and associated in most cases with oxygen deprivation in the neonate due to birth asphyxia. Children with HIE develop problems such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, learning difficulties, and other disabilities. We hereby report the case of treating a child patient with HIE whose chief complaint of severe lingual ulceration. A 12-month-old boy referred to our hospital to treat ulcers of ventral surface of tongue. He has been suffering from lingual ulceration due to persistent tongue thrusting. He has bitten his own tongue involuntary. The ulceration was apparently seemed to be not healed because of the constant irritation by lower incisors. So we designed tongue protector to prevent lingual ulcers. The appliance was proved to be effective to reduce tongue trauma by lower incisors and periodic follow-up is needed.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.349-353
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• 2008

Purpose: There are 3 well-known surgical procedures to treat Pierre Robin sequence: tongue-lip adhesion, distraction osteogenesis of mandible, and tracheostomy. The classical tongue-lip adhesion is an effective way to keep airway. The tongue, however, becomes quite non-mobile and appears dormant until the patient could control upper airway and the adhesion can be maintained for prolonged period. Most of all, this procedure does not provide the correction of the micrognathia. Distraction osteogenesis is a good technique to correct micrognathia and to prevent tracheostomies in patients with Pierre Robin sequence. But airway keeping procedure is needed during the distraction period. The purpose of this study is to determine the usefulness of temporary tongue-lip traction during the initial period of mandibular distraction in Pierre Robin sequence patients with severe airway problems requiring operative procedure. Methods: It was a prospective study of 2 Pierre Robin sequence patients aged between 4 months and 6 months requiring surgical procedure to correct recurrent and severe pulmonary complications. Two patients underwent distraction osteogenesis of mandible. During the operation, deep one tension suture was performed to tract the tongue and lip. When the patient gained control of upper airway at the initial period of distraction and micrognathia was corrected, the traction suture was removed. Results: All patients were followed up. No patients complained severe pulmonary complications and tracheostomy could be avoided. No patients had severe pulmonary complication. The pulmonary condition of patients was good. Conclusion: In severe Pierre Robin sequence case, temporary tongue-lip traction is a good assistant method in distraction osteogenesis because this method can avoid tracheostomy.

• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.697-705
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• 1996

Ankyloglossia, or tongue-tie, is a congenital condition which occurs as a result of fusion between the tongue and the floor of the mouth. Ankyloglossia often results in malocclusion with an anterior "open bite" deformity, early prognathism, swallowing problem, speech disorder, and periodontal problem. Generally lingual frenectomy is used for treatment of ankyloglossia, but incomplete operation and simple frenectomy may produce a scar contracture resulting in a more deformed ankyloglossia than was present initially. The Z-plasty is used for the correction of scar contractures and the replacement of missing tissue and this procedure is ideally suited for the treatment of an ankylosed frenum. Most authors advise postponement of any decision for surgical correction of tongue-tie until the age of 4 years, unless the child is having much difficulty with sucking or swallowing. We treated 4 patients with ankyloglossia using Z-plasty technique. As a result, we found out that it was effective for correction of movement limitation of tongue, prevention of relapse. Further, periodic check ups are needed for evaluation of relapse, improvement of speech, and other functions of the tongue.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.11
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• pp.221-228
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• 2014

The color and shape of the tongue reflect the physiological and clinico-pathological condition of the body. Recently, various tongue image acquisition devices have been developed for accurate diagnosis based on quantitative and objective tongue features. Since a color information is essential for tongue diagnosis, the performance of an illuminator is very important for the tongue image acquisition device. In this study, we developed an indirect illumination, which is possible to improve a homogeneity of light intensities on the tongue surface, and evaluated its performances. In order to realize the indirect illumination (II), a semi-ellipsoidal solid structure (SESS) for the light reflex was located in the system, and two high-brightness white LEDs were placed for illuminating the areas under frontal camera in the SESS. The tongue surface was illuminated by reflected light from the SESS. The light homogeneity induced by three different illuminations including the II was evaluated by calculating coefficient of variation (CV) of illuminance of five regions. The II showed less than 0.01 of CV and the direct illumination (DI) and the direct illumination with a light diffusion plate (DILDP) showed 0.16 and 0.13, respectively. The reflexed pixel ratios of tongue phantom images show 5.76%, 4.22%, 1.79% for the DI, the DILDP and the II, respectively. The homogeneity of a tongue phantom was evaluated by calculating CV of mean pixel values of six different tongue regions, and showed less than 0.06 in the II. If the II technique apply to tongue diagnosis system, it is expected to improve diagnostic accuracy in clinic.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.158-160
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• 2001

Ankyloglossia is the presence of a lingual frenulum, which can range from a mucous membrane band to a short and thick band and, in extreme cases, to fusion of the tongue to the floor of the mouth. The effects of such a condition, in addition to speech defects and occasionally restriction of sucking, including dental deformities, such as open bite, or even prognathism. Treatment is surgical. The preferred treatment is horizontal sectioning of the frenulum down to the lingual septum and then suturing of the mucosa. The main problem after the healing of surgical wound is adhesion and contracture. Adhesion restrict the movement of tongue like tongue-tie. Z-plasty at the site of incision can solve this problem by changing the direction of scar. We have experienced a patient with ankyloglossia with speech defect, who underwent frenuloomy by Z-plasty. So we present a surgical treatment of Ankyloglossia using Z-plasty and discuss the treatment with a review of literature.

• Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.74-77
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• 2010

Isolated hypoglossal nerve palsy is a rare clinical condition and it causes deviation of the tongue and dysarthria. A 50-year-old female presented with tongue deviation to the left and mild dysarthria. She had no remarkable past medical history except several recent upper respiratory infections. On examination, the other cranial nerves were intact and she had no focal neurological signs. The findings of MRI and MR angiography were normal. Cerebrospinal fluid analysis revealed only mild elevation of protein. We diagnosed her as suffering with idiopathic isolated hypoglossal nerver palsy and we administered steroid therapy. The dysarthria was improved, but the tongue deviation still remained at 50 days after onset. We report here on a rare case of idiopathic isolated hypoglossal nerve palsy.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.101-113
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• 2010

The present study investigated how the kinematics of the /a/-to-/i/ tongue movement in Korean would be influenced by prosodic boundary. The /a/-to-/i/ sequence was used as 'transboundary' test materials which occurred across a prosodic boundary as in /ilnjəʃ$^h$a/ # / minsakwae/ ('일년차#민사과에' 'the first year worker' # 'dept. of civil affairs'). It also tested whether the V-to-V tongue movement would be further influenced by its syllable structure with /m/ which was placed either in the coda condition (/am#i/) or in the onset condition (/a#mi). Results of an EMA (Electromagnetic Articulagraphy) study showed that kinematical parameters such as the movement distance (displacement), the movement duration, and the movement velocity (speed) all varied as a function of the boundary strength, showing an articulatory strengthening pattern of a "larger, longer and faster" movement. Interestingly, however, the larger, longer and faster pattern associated with boundary marking in Korean has often been observed with stress (prominence) marking in English. It was proposed that language-specific prosodic systems induce different ways in which phonetics and prosody interact: Korean, as a language without lexical stress and pitch accent, has more degree of freedom to express prosodic strengthening, while languages such as English have constraints, so that some strengthening patterns are reserved for lexical stress. The V-to-V tongue movement was also found to be influenced by the intervening consonant /m/'s syllable affiliation, showing a more preboundary lengthening of the tongue movement when /m/ was part of the preboundary syllable (/am#i/). The results, together, show that the fine-grained phonetic details do not simply arise as low-level physical phenomena, but reflect higher-level linguistic structures, such as syllable and prosodic structures. It was also discussed how the boundary-induced kinematic patterns could be accounted for in terms of the task dynamic model and the theory of the prosodic gesture ($\pi$-gesture).

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.153-158
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• 2012

Cellular effects of ethanol in YD-15 tongue carcinoma cells were assessed by MTT assay, caspase activity assay, Western blotting and flow cytometry. Ethanol inhibited the growth and proliferation of YD-15 cells in a dose- and time-dependent manner in an MTT assay. The effects of ethanol on cell cycle control at low percent range of ethanol concentration (0 to 1.5%), the condition not inducing YD-15 cell death, was investigated after exposing cells to alcohol for a certain period of time. Western blotting on the expression of cell cycle inhibitors showed that p21 and p27 was up-regulated as ethanol concentration increases from 0 to 1.5% whilst the cell cycle regulators, cdk1, cdk2, and cdk4 as well as Cyclin A, Cyclin B1 and Cyclin E1, were gradually down-regulated. Flow cytometric analysis of cell cycle distribution revealed that YD-15 cells exposed to 1.5% ethanol for 24 h was mainly arrested at G2/M phase. However, ethanol induced apoptosis in YD-15 cells exposed to 2.5% or higher percent of ethanol. The cleaved PARP, a marker of caspase-3 mediated apoptosis, and the activation of caspase-3 and -7 were detected by caspase activity assay or Western blotting. Our results suggest that ethanol elicits inhibitory effect on the growth and proliferation of YD-15 tongue carcinoma cells by mediating cell cycle arrest at G2/M at low concentration range and ultimately induces apoptosis under the condition of high concentration.