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Morphometric development of the tongue in fetal cadavers

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Abstract

Purpose

The tongue is a specific organ for the sense of taste. It consists of the striated muscle and mucous membrane. Furthermore, it helps the functions of speech, chewing, and swallowing. In this study, we aimed to reveal some morphometric properties of the tongue in fetal cadavers.

Methods

The study was conducted on a total of 45 fetal tongues (25 male tongues, 20 female tongues) aged between 17 and 40 weeks. The fetuses were divided into three groups as trimester II, trimester III, and full term. For each tongue, the length, width, area, free tongue length, and the terminal sulcus angle were measured using Image J program. The free tongue length/tongue length ratio was examined.

Results

The obtained data were compared according to the trimester groups and genders. It was determined that the tongue length, width, area, and free tongue length increased during the trimesters and that there was no significant difference in the terminal sulcus angle and the free tongue length/tongue length ratio between the trimesters. No significant difference was found in all parameters between the genders.

Conclusions

This study presented significant data on morphometric development of the tongue. These data are thought to be useful for determining the anomaly and variations of the tongue.

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Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, Suleyman Demirel University, 32260, Isparta, Turkey

    Ahmet Dursun & Yadigar Kastamonı

  2. Department of Medical Biology, Faculty of Medicine, Suleyman Demirel University, 32260, Isparta, Turkey

    Demet Kacaroglu

  3. Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul Medipol University, 34815, Istanbul, Turkey

    Neslihan Yuzbasıoglu

  4. Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, Afyonkarahisar Health Sciences University, 03200, Afyonkarahisar, Turkey

    Tolga Ertekın

Authors
  1. Ahmet Dursun
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  2. Yadigar Kastamonı
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  3. Demet Kacaroglu
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  4. Neslihan Yuzbasıoglu
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  5. Tolga Ertekın
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Contributions

AD: project development, data acquisition, manuscript draft, and manuscript review. YK: data acquisition, manuscript draft, manuscript review. DK: data acquisition, manuscript review. NY: data analysis, manuscript editing. TE: data analysis, manuscript editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ahmet Dursun.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

This is a retrospective study. Ethics committee approval is not required. This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Dursun, A., Kastamonı, Y., Kacaroglu, D. et al. Morphometric development of the tongue in fetal cadavers. Surg Radiol Anat 42, 3–8 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00276-019-02301-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00276-019-02301-z

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