Twenty-five percent of mothers of infants with ankyloglossia reported breastfeeding difficulty compared with only 3% of the mothers in the control group. The study concluded that ankyloglossia can adversely affect breastfeeding in certain infants. Infants with ankyloglossia do not, however, have such big difficulties when feeding from a bottle. Limitations of this study include the small sample size and the fact that the quality of the mothers breastfeeding was not assessed.Wallace and Clark also studied breastfeeding difficulties in infants with ankyloglossia. They followed 10 infants with ankyloglossia who underwent surgical tongue-tie division. Eight of the ten mothers experienced poor infant latching onto the breast, 6/10 experienced sore nipples and 5/10 experienced continual feeding cycles; 3/10 mothers were exclusively breastfeeding. Following a tongue-tie division, 4/10 mothers noted immediate improvements in breastfeeding, 3/10 mothers did not notice any improvements and 6/10 mothers continued breastfeeding for at least four months after the surgery. The study concluded that tongue-tie division may be a possible benefit for infants experiencing breastfeeding difficulties due to ankyloglossia and further investigation is warranted. The limitations of this study include the small sample size and the fact that there was not a control group. In addition, the conclusions were based on subjective parent report as opposed to objective measures. Speech
Messner and Lalakea studied speech in children with ankyloglossia.
Several recent systematic reviews and randomized control trials have argued that ankyloglossia does not impact speech sound development and that there is no difference in speech sound development between children who received surgery to release tongue-tie and those who did not.Messner and Lalakea also examined speech and ankyloglossia in another study. They studied 15 patients and speech was grossly normal in all the subjects. However, half of the subjects reported that they thought that their speech was more effortful than other peoples speech.Horton and colleagues discussed the relationship between ankyloglossia and speech. They believe that the tongue-tie contributes to difficulty in range and rate of articulation and that compensation is needed. Compensation at its worst may involve a Cupids bow of the tongue.Although the tongue-tie exists, and even years following surgery, common speech abnormalities include mispronunciation of words, the most common of which is pronouncing Ls as Ws; for example, the word "lemonade" would come out as "wemonade". Mechanical and social effects
Ankyloglossia can result in mechanical and social effects. Lalakea and Messner studied 15 people, aged 14 to 68 years old. The subjects were given questionnaires in order to assess functional complaints associated with ankyloglossia. Eight subjects noted one or more mechanical limitations which included cuts or discomfort underneath the tongue and difficulties with kissing, licking ones lips, eating an ice cream cone, keeping ones tongue clean and performing tongue tricks. In addition, seven subjects noted social effects such as embarrassment and teasing.