PDA

View Full Version : Dogs and Tongue Piercings - A cautionary tale


Corinthian
03-17-2009, 06:30 AM
Warning: the link contains pictures of the injury.


http://www.nature.com/bdj/journal/v206/n5/full/sj.bdj.2009.175.html

British Dental Journal 206, 239 - 240 (2009)
Published online: 14 March 2009 | doi:10.1038/sj.bdj.2009.175

Canine tongue trauma
P. Gill1, R. M. Graham1 & E. F. Thomson1

Send your letters to the Editor, British Dental Journal, 64 Wimpole Street, London W1G 8YS e-mail: bdj@bda.org

Priority will be given to letters less than 500 words long. Authors must sign the letter, which may be edited for reasons of space.

Introduction
Sir, we thought that your readers would appreciate this new method of tongue piercing removal; it is not one to be recommended on a regular basis, however!

A 32-year-old man presented to the maxillofacial on-call service via the accident and emergency department complaining that his tongue ring had been removed by his Greyhound dog. Whilst he was playing with his dog, the dog managed to hook its lower canine tooth around the owner's tongue ring; once engaged, the dog got such a fright that it forcibly retracted and thereby pulled the ring through the midline of the tongue. Medically, the man was found to be fit and well. On examination he was found to have a through and through midline tongue laceration causing a forked tongue appearance. There was both a raw area of granulation tissue and an epithelialised tract suggestive of a recently traumatised but long-standing piercing (see Fig. 1); in addition, there was a small mucosal message!

......