You’re part of our team!

At the NC Tongue Tie Clinic we believe that collaboration is the foundation of good care. Our care is rooted in evidence and function, which we believe takes a team to achieve. Accurate diagnosis depends on functional assessment because we prioritize function over appearance. We want our patients to have a functional expert on their team before they even come to us. We appreciate how structure affects function and the value of therapies for these issues.  To this end, we have provided a referral form that helps communicate your functional/structural assessment as conveniently as possible.

We provide an integrative infant clinic that includes bodywork, expert feeding support, and functional releases of all oral restrictions in one place, under one global fee. This is a great start toward a bigger picture approach, but it is not complete care! Working with an infant feeding expert (IBCLC, SLP, OT) before seeking a diagnosis is invaluable for our patients. We have found that “prehab” provides clarity of diagnosis as well as optimal post release results. We prefer bodywork and feeding follow up within a week of babies receiving treatment with us. Continuity of care is important!

Our integrative clinic is modeled after the Centering Model of Care. This means that families have the benefit a support group as well as extensive education during their centering time the day of treatment. Families join our integrative clinic for treatment, after previously being diagnosed one on one. Each baby will receive manual therapy (bodywork) before going back for a functional release using a CO2 dental laser. Immediately following release parents have support with feeding and an interim plan based on their existing care plan and expected date of follow up.  Throughout this experience parents are in a hybrid of a support group and classroom. They are educated on what to expect post op, comfort measures during healing, active wound management, therapeutic techniques for integration of change, navigating feeding during the eb and flow of recovery, and the importance of follow up with their whole team. They are encouraged to engage in being part of the community we create through parent to parent support. We also continue this through our exclusive virtual support group.

Follow-up care has also been found, by us, to be important. In addition to encouraging follow up with other team members, we provide -by default- follow ups around 1 week, 2 weeks, and 1 month post release. Additional follow ups are decided on based on need. Since we are also a research center, we continue to look at the data we collect to decide on optimal timing of follow up as well as other elements. We’re open to input!