Encino Dentist Dr. Allan Melnick personally wrote, designed and maintains this website. 16311 Ventura Blvd, #785, Encino, CA 91436 (818) 385-3681

Sports and Tooth Injury Prevention / Mouth Guards

Mouthguards are important preventative measures for the health of your teeth! Just ask Dentist Dr Allan Melnick, DDS in Encino, California

A mouth guard can feellike a nusanceat first until you see someone without a night guard severly injured. Sports related injuries are part of the game. Each year 15 million dental injuries will occur during sporting events. Fortunately thereis one simple device you should never leave at home when at sports or activerecreation - Your Mouth Guard!

It has been estimated by the American Dental Association (2007) that the total dental costs involved can reach $15,000 when a tooth is knocked out. This includes all the dental care that will be required over the persons lifetime. This is approximately 30 times the cost of the mouth guard.Besides the expenses, amouth guard can save your teeth, lips, jaws, tongue, and cheeks from serious injury, even when you strap on a helmet or face guard. A mouth guard provides protection for everyone, children and adults, young and old.

The key to the amount of protection a mouth guard can provide is how well it fits and the materials that it is made of.The expression "you get what you pay for" fits perfectly in this situation.Inexpensive store purchased generic mouthguards simply do not provide much protection and are not durable.

When we make a mouth guard the first step is to make a very precisehard reproduction of the teeth, Then in a specially equiped dental labmultiple layers of a soft resin are adapted to thereproduction under high temperturers and high pressure. The process is called pressure lamination. This produces a tightly adapted durablemouth guard that provides the best level of protection available.

Here are someimportant facts about why amouth guard is socritical for preventing sports injuries.

  • A properly fabricated mouth guard reduces the rate of concussions and head and neck injuries during college football
  • Dental injuries are the most common form of facial injuries in contact sports.
  • An athlete is sixty (60 ) times more likely to receive dental injuries when not wearing a protective mouth guard.
  • Every person involved in contact sports has about 10% chance of receiving a facial injury each season.
  • The costfor the surgical replanting of a knocked out tooth is approximately $4000.00 foronly thesurgical fee.
  • The use of a face guard and mouth guard prevents approximately 200,000 high school and college injuries per year.
  • A properly fitting mouth guard reduces the chances of having a concussion from a blow to the lower jaw.
  • Mouth guards are now a requirement for high school and college football. This resulted in a 50% reduction in mouth injuries.
  • The risk of facial injuries is actually higher in basketball than football, yet only 7% of basketball players use mouth guards.
  • Read more about Sports and Tooth Injury Preventionin our blog.