Family Orthodontics | Childrens' Dentistry & Ortho | Kids Orthodontics Services in Toronto

Did you know that there is little to no education regarding oral ties in dental and medical school? You might also be shocked to find out that it's not even part of most speech pathology programs or lactation consultants' course work.

Because of a need in the community for pediatric dentists to perform laser tongue and lip tie releases, we spent hundreds of hours learning from leading experts in the oral tie field. We've learned all about tongue and lip ties, their implications, how to properly assess both their physical appearance and their functional limitations as well as how to perform proper, full and complete tongue and lip tie release procedures.

Since 2014, we have successfully performed thousands of tongue and lip tie releases and we continue to receive referrals from pediatricians, family physicians, speech pathologists, manual therapists, lactation consultants and most importantly from the many happy families that we have serviced over the years.

We pride ourselves on a conservative approach to tongue tie releases with a strong emphasis on getting to the root cause of the issue. This often involves a team of professionals working together to solve the problem. Our team includes specialized lactation consultants, speech pathologists, manual therapists and physicians. We can't wait to help you!

What is a tongue or lip tie?

A tongue-tie (ankyloglossia) or an upper lip-tie is when a frenum is:

a) particularly tight and/or short AND…
b) causes functional issues

It takes an experienced provider to thoroughly investigate and identify an oral restriction and the functional issues it may cause. A functional issue is something that makes daily tasks difficult. This may mean there are breastfeeding challenges, difficulties feeding from a bottle, eating solids, producing speech sounds, or other challenges contributing to dental/airway issues.

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Why we use a laser

At SmileSquad, we use a state-of-the-art, LightScalpel CO2 laser to perform all of our frenectomies. We LOVE our laser because it allows us to work quickly and precisely to remove all restrictive tissue, down to the last fiber. Some reasons we love our CO2 laser:

1. Vaporizes the tissue without actually touching the tissue
2. Extremely efficient—takes a few seconds to complete the procedure
3. Dry working field—minimizes bleeding which allows for great visibility during the procedure, ensuring a complete release of all restrictive fibers
4. Minimal postoperative bleeding
5. In our experience, it minimizes discomfort during and after the procedure as compared to a diode laser.
6. In our experience, post operative healing is optimized with the CO2 laser compared to diode laser

Our Frenectomy Squad

Dr. Lori and Dr. Sabrina are the SmileSquad frenectomy providers. They are specialized pediatric dentists who have extensive training and continuing education in the field of tongue + lip-ties, frenectomies, and airway issues. They each have 8+ years of experience in performing releases on babies, kids and teens. At our clinic, we believe that each child is unique and we take an individualized approach to care, with a focus on finding root causes and preventing future issues, promoting optimal health for your child.

Michelle and Amanda are our board certified lactation consultants (IBCLCs) with thousands of hours of experience helping families overcome a myriad of feeding challenges. They focus on supporting families with babies who have tongue + lip ties. Michelle and Amanda's expertise in determining the root cause of feeding difficulties is an integral part of the assessment and diagnosis process and helps the release providers determine if a procedure is likely to be beneficial or if other modalities are necessary in order to achieve feeding goals.