"It's not a terribly painful operation, I mean there is discomfort associated with it, but there's usually not severe pain associated with it." Doctor Stewart, Otorhinolaryngologist-in-chief at New York Presbyterian Hospital, explains how simple recovery is from tongue tie surgery and how it's almost painless.

Doctor Stewart:



It's not a terribly painful operation. I mean there is discomfort associated with it. However, there's not usually severe pain associated with it.



Well, of course, the child then immediately goes to the recovery room where they are observed for a period of time as they recover from anesthesia and, then typically they can go home. This is an outpatient procedure. There will be some pain, there will be some swelling. Initially, actually, there will be some change in speech, maybe for the worst, because there's swelling and there's pain and the child, or anyone, who has the surgery will not want to move their tongue as much as they normally do because it hurts. And so that may sound a little muffled or a little something like that. You want to modify the diet a little bit. You certainly don't want to have a bunch of hot, spicy food. You wouldn't want to have crunchy, hard things that can get in there and interfere with the stitches or get imbedded where the surgery has been. Usually if there's anything that would injure the surgery, it's going to cause pain and the child will sort of stop doing it, you know, before they actually get to the point where any damage is done. It's not a terribly painful operation. I mean there is discomfort associated with it. There's not usually severe pain associated with it.



Doctor Stewart:



Now, I'm gonna look in there while you say lollipop.



Billy:



Lollipop.



Doctor Stewart:



Okay, try to say it with your tongue. Lollipop.



Billy:



Lollipop.



Doctor Stewart:



There you go.



Mom:



Good job, you did it!



Doctor Stewart:



You can do it that way now.



And in some of the smaller surgeries, particularly in little children where it's just a membranous tie, I mean those children basically hardly need Tylenol. They really almost - it's almost painless.