Dental changes associated with tongue retaining device wear

摘要

The article "Dental changes evaluated with a 3D computer-assisted model analysis after long-term tongue retaining device wear in OSA patients" by Chen et al. seems to leave many open questions.I found the statement in the conclusion of the article "It was hypothesized that there might be two possible major mechanisms for the TRD induced side effects: one is the forward displacement of the tongue, which affects the anterior dental arch; and the second is the lateral pressure of the tongue affects the posterior arch" difficult to justify on the basis of the cases presented. The tongue has a profound effect on tooth position whether encased in a tongue-retaining device or not so this statement is not surprising but I fail to see how any hypotheses or conclusions can be drawn from the cases presented because the workflow protocol was so different in each instance. In fact, the conclusions probably could have been drawn without any case reports to substantiate them.