Prevalence of Tongue Anomalies Among Group of Egyptian Children: a Cross-sectional Study

The tongue is an important and accessible muscle in the oral cavity, it has many functions which includes speech, chewing, swallowing, sucking, control of breathing, growth and developments of the jaws and perception to pain.

Also, many systemic disorders and diseases affect the tongue which makes it a great reflector of the general health.

Tongue anomalies has different frequencies and prevalence between different countries, these differences may be due to geographic, ethnic, gender and age variability, for example a study in Iran in 2003 found that the prevalence of tongue anomalies 34.3%, while another study in Colombia in 2013 found that the prevalence of tongue anomalies on their study population was 79.9%.

The knowledge of the prevalence of tongue anomalies among Egyptian children is missing in the literature which could compromise the quality of dental care, increase the occurrence of orthodontic problems and decrease the chances of early detection of some systemic diseases, since tongue anomalies could help in early determination of some systemic diseases in cases of fissured tongue and geographic tongue as well as early prevention and early intervention of malocclusions and speech defects that might be caused in cases of microglossia, macroglossia and ankyloglossia.

Hence, the knowledge of prevalence of tongue anomalies among Egyptian children can aid in setting a reference which will then help in public health planning and prevention policies.