oooo that IS weird said the doctor.....

[dilbertina]

ok, right, thanks for that!

Since ds nursery were continuing their illness imagining campaign I took ds to an emergency gp appointment this am to confirm he isn't in fact sick - just teething.

I had been looking in his mouth for evidence of proposed lurgy to no avail...but whilst I was there I noticed something else....

Apparently he has a really very abnormally low maxillary labial fraenum!!! Yeah I know! - ok so I googled.

Basically the inside of his top lip joins to his gum not a bit up his gum but between his front two teeth! How could I not have noticed this?!

I was expecting a gap between front top teeth as strong family history. But he has a BIG gap apparently caused/worsened by this! He did also have a tongue tie which was snipped when he was a few weeks - I wonder if conditions are related?

Will go and see usual Gp, but in meantime has anyone else had any experience of this?

Never heard of a relationship between the 2. The maxillary labial frenum is basically the attachment of one of the muscles, you may well find as the jaw grows the postion will become more favourable. If not it will prevent the teeth coming into the correct position. Like a tongue tie it cann be snipped and repositioned in a simple proceedure and the teeth will either erupt into the correct postion or need to be orthodontically repositioned. (Bear in mind orhtodontics doesn't come cheap these days, and you won't get it on the nhs even if you are registered with an nhs dentist)

Really COV?

So we'll have to pay for ds's brace?

(dentally ingorant, have i misunderstood?)

Sorry dilbertina, no experience, hijacked your thread

Oh deep joy!

ComeOVeneer, as my resident expert I would be very grateful if you could advise....

Presumably any remedial "snipping", if necessary, would need to be done well before adult teeth came through? What is a usual age?

Is the snipping a standard NHS thing or would the whole lot need to be done privately?

Is the condition/surgery quite common?

Would I be better off talking to dentist or gp or both about it? (He has his first dental appt in a couple of weeks (he's 18mo) well, he had one at 12 months but still had no teeth so dentist didn't bother!)

Many thanks

Since the reforms of the nhs dental system back in April 2004, orthodontic treatment (which up until then was free for any child under the age of 16), is now only paid for by the nhs in severe cases. A child will be assessed and graded (IOTN - index of treatment need) and almost all of them won't fall into the necessary cateegories to qualify for free treament. These days you can be looking at (in the region of) £2000 for a course of orthodontic treament.

dilberitnea dd1 had something siMliar - had a frenectomy /snip at aged 12 ish i believe on NHS - over wiht very quickly and no probs since - now has brace to close the gap ..hope this helps and dont worry..

It won't really be apparent until at least 8-9 wether any intervention is necessary. It may be possible to do it at this age or even a couple of years older and have spontaneous closure of the diastemma, particularly when the canines erupt as they cause some force towards the midline. So it may be that braces aren't necessary. The best bet is to get your dentist to see him and monitor the situation over the coming years.

My dentist made this observation about dd1 when she was 7 and had quite a large gap betwen her front teeth. He said it might right itself as her adult teeth came in. She is now nearly 12 and with new larger teeth coming through has no gap at all

Many thanks for your advice everyone, feel much more relaxed about it now. Felt SO guilty I hadn't even noticed the problem!

On the plus side his speech is coming on in leaps and bounds so don't think weird gum/lip thing is causing too much problem!

Thanks again