Treatment of tongue dysfunction: rehabilitation for prescribers’ practice

¹ Maxillofacial Physiotherapist, Lecturer at the dental faculty at Montrouge, University Paris Descartes  
² Dentist, Consultation of Orofacial Functional Disorders, Department of Oral Medicine/Dentistry, Pitié-Salpétrière Charles-Foix Hospital Group, 94200 Ivry-sur-Seine, France

Address for correspondence: Hélène Gil – 22 rue de Turin – 75008 Paris, E-mail: h70gil@orange.fr

Received: 30 June 2018
Accepted: 21 July 2018

Abstract

Immature tongue function so-called “tongue-thrust or infantile and teeth apart swallow” and its rehabilitation involves multiple specialities in dentistry (pediatric dentistry, orthodontics, management of temporomandibular disorders, periodontics,…). Fifty years ago Mrs Fournier described a tongue rehabilitation technique. Given the difficulty to find a physiotherapist able to practice such a therapeutic, the aim of this article is to describe this therapeutic so that non-physiotherapists practitioners be able to initiate it and to teach it to their patients, at least for simple cases. It includes corrections of tongue immaturity, tongue resting position, deglutition and phonation. These changes might involve adaptive cortical neuroplasticity. Indeed these last years it has been shown in humans that standardised and calibrated tongue lift or protrusion exercises induce such plasticity in the tongue motor cortex.