A cineradiographic study of deglutitive tongue movement in patients with anterior open bite

The purpose of this study was to use cineradiographic images to investigate tongue movement during deglutition in anterior open bite patients with tongue thrust. Each subject had semi-spherical lead markers attached to the tip and dorsal surface of the tongue and was asked to swallow 5 ml of diluted liquid barium. Tongue movement during deglutition was recorded in the mid-sagittal plane with an X-ray VTR system. The deglutition process was divided into 6 stages to analyze the movements of the tip and dorsal surface of the tongue in each stage. In open bite patients, both the tip and dorsum of the tongue were positioned anteriorly and inferiorly at rest and during the buildup of negative intraoral pressure. The dorsum of the tongue tended to move and be positioned anteriorly as the tongue tip protruded and pushed the maxillary and mandibular anterior teeth. The tongue tip traveled a significantly smaller distance from the stage of tongue rest position to that of most retruded tongue tip position and a significantly larger distance from the stage of most retruded tongue tip position to that of tongue tip fixation in open bite patients than in controls.