Tongue Piercing - Kobal Orthodontics

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Tongue Piercing
A Fad With Serious Dental and Physical Consequences
People who undergo body piercing may consider it a form of body art and selfexpression,
no different from wearing earrings. But possible damage to dental and oral
structures can result from piercing, according to Diana Ram and Benjamin Peretz in the
Journal of Dentistry for Children.
Dentists are often the first to note any harmful effects.
Dentists who treat teenagers are becoming accustomed to seeing more patients with
jewelry inside and around the mouth, the article notes. Most mouth jewelry takes the
form of removable studs, hoops or barbell-shaped devices that are purchased
commercially. Dentists are often the first to note any harmful effects resulting from the
piercing process or the jewelry itself, such as fractures or cracks in the tooth structure
caused by a metallic barbell stud. Additional negative effects include:
• pain
• post-placement edema
• prolonged bleeding
• gingival injury
• permanent numbness
• loss of taste
• oral hygiene problems
In addition, piercing has been identified by the National Institutes of Health as a possible
vehicle for transmission of hepatitis B, C, D, and G, and also of HIV. This is very
serious! Persons who are involved in body piercing in any way are putting their lives and
the lives of others in jeopardy.
Body piercers are not members of the medical profession.
In one case, a teen with a diagnosed ventricular septal defect did not take any
prophylactic antibiotics before the piercing and was unaware of the possible
complications of the procedure and its association with the heart defect. The article points
out that the needle inserted through the tongue during piercing may have allowed bacteria
to enter the bloodstream, resulting in infective bacterial endocarditis, another lifethreatening
disease.
Most episodes of tongue piercing may proceed uneventfully, but the severity of reported
complications makes the practice difficult to condone. Any time skin or oral tissues are
pierced there is always the potential risk for infection. And the high level of bacteria on
the tongue raises the risk considerably.

Body piercers are unlicensed and are not members of the medical profession. Usually, no
health histories are taken at tongue-piercing establishments, no emergency kits are
available, no prophylactic antibiotics are used, and no postoperative care is available.
The following is a recent Associated Press article that shows an
extreme example of the danger of piercing one's tongue:
Teen’s tongue piercing leads to extreme facial pain
By
Carla Johnson
Associated Press
Oct. 17, 2006 01:13 PM
CHICAGO - The teenager said the stabbing pains in her face felt like electrical shocks
that lasted 10 to 30 seconds and struck 20 to 30 times a day. Her doctors diagnosed
trigeminal neuralgia, a nerve disorder sometimes called "suicide disease" because of the
excruciating and dispiriting pain it causes. Doctors tried painkillers, then stronger
medication, but in the end, a cure proved more simple: The young woman removed the
metal stud from her pierced tongue. Two days later her pain vanished.
The account in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association is the latest
documentation of complications, some life-threatening, linked to tongue piercing. Other
problems include tetanus, heart infections, brain abscess, chipped teeth and receding
gums. One woman developed so much scar tissue that it resembled what she called a
"second tongue."
In the newly reported case, the young Italian woman's mouth jewelry apparently irritated
a nerve running along the jaw under her tongue. That nerve is connected to the trigeminal
nerve, one of the largest in the head. "There are people who have been dropped to their
knees" by trigeminal neuralgia, said Alana Greca, a registered nurse and director of
patient support for the Trigeminal Neuralgia Association. "That's how intense and how
horrendous the pain can be."
The teenager is lucky her pain disappeared, Greca said. "Certainly, this was an isolated
case, an extremely rare complication of this kind of piercing," said Dr. Marcelo Galarza,
a neurosurgeon at Villa Maria Cecilia Hospital in Ravenna, Italy, who reported the case
to the journal.
The tongue is "a particularly dangerous place to pierce" because it is rich in blood vessels
that can spread infection to major organs and because it is near important nerves and the
upper airway, he said.
Jeanne Fritch, owner of Personal Art, a piercing and tattooing studio in Lake Station,
Ind., said she has not heard of a similar case in her 21 years in business. Fritch
recommended people interested in tongue piercing see only professional, experienced

piercers and use only "implant grade" metal jewelry. Good mouth hygiene while the
tongue heals also is important, Fritch said.
Stefania Fraccalvieri, the patient in the report, is now 21 and a student in Rome. Her
advice to people considering tongue piercing: "Don't do that. My experience was so bad.
I was so sick and now I feel much better."
JAMA: http://jama.ama-assn.org
On the Net:
An article in the Journal of the California Dental Association, August 2007 states:
"Tongue piercing is a risk factor for gingival recession, especially when the bar is longer
than 1.6 cm and the ornament is in place for at least two years. Most of the reported
piercing-induced gingival damages are related to lip ornaments, probably because the
usual metal flattened disk jewelry in the lip induces more traumatic damage to the tissue,
compared with the usual ball ornament in the tongue."
The authors reported a case where bone was lost on the tongue side of the lower front
teeth due to the local irritation induced by the sphere of a tongue ornament.
Journal of Clinical Orthodontics: 2010
_____________
An article published by Tabbaa, Goigova, and Preston reports:
“Our clinic treated a woman with a pierced tongue who habitually placed the metallic,
barbell-shaped piercing stud between the maxillary central incisors, resulting in a midline
diastema [space] between teeth that had previously been well aligned orthodontically.”
Their study also found: “that 17% of all body piercings were associated with
complications ranging from insignificant to life-threatening.”
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