Język prawdę ci powie, czyli język jako narzędzie diagnostyczne wielu chorób

© Borgis - Medycyna Rodzinna 3/2017, s. 226-232 | DOI: 10.25121/MR.2017.20.3.226

Zygmunt Zdrojewicz¹, Jacek Majewski², Justyna Pająk², Roksana Sycz²

Summary
Tongue is an elementary organ of oral cavity located on its floor. Healthy one should be pink, a bit moist and plaint. This complex organ is involved in speech and expression as well as in gustation, mastication, and deglutition.
The aim of the article is to discuss possible changes of the tongue that can be useful in a diagnostic process of many diseases. Tongue changes its look not only because of local diseases such as hairy tongue, geographic tongue, hemangioma or tongue cancer but also in systematic ones. Altered appearance can be caused by dehydration or anaemia. Apart from that, nutritional deficiency or diabetes may also affect the tongue – sometimes these are the first worrying symptoms. Changes of the tongue are also present in many bacterial, viral and fungal diseases as well as autoimmune diseases (psoriasis or rheumatoid arthritis). Chinese medicine focuses on analyzing tongue look and drawing conclusions from it. The relation between the color of the tongue and gastroenterological diseases, menstrual cycle or even neoplastic process has been proven. This type of diagnosing relies on examining doctor and its experience, thus is subjective. However, special testing devices using computer analysis are already used with proven repeatability of results. Nevertheless, the tongue with its very easy access should obligatory be examined.

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