Just facts: Dental injuries are more common than you think

Dental injuries, especially with athletes, are quite common. One of the best devices to protect athletes from injuries is using a custom mouth guard.

Here are some statistics and facts on dental injures from sports:

• More than 5 million teeth are injured/knocked out every year
• Dental injuries result in nearly $500 million spent on replacing teeth
• 13-39% of all dental injuries are related to sports
• Sporting activities cause the greatest percentage of dental traumatic injuries in teens
• 50% of all children and teens will suffer at least one traumatic injury to a tooth by the time they graduate high school
• Broken teeth, neck injuries and abrasions in the mouth are very common among athletes
• These injuries account for more than 600,000 emergency room visits a year
• Young men suffer traumatic tooth injuries 2-3 times more often than young women
• Sports related injuries account for 3 times more facial/dental injuries than violence or traffic accidents
• Pre-teens and teens have the highest number of sports related dental injuries, with the top 3 sports being:
  • Basketball
  • Biking and
  • Hockey
• Basketball players have in injury potential 13 times that of football players
• Risks for athletes include:
  • Suffering a fall during competition
  • Contact from elbows, hands, arms
  • Contact from flying equipment
• Use of a mouth guard is essential to lower the risk of dental injury in sports
• Athletes are 60 times more likely to suffer harm to the teeth when not wearing a mouth guard
• 80% of traumatic dental injuries occur to the top front teeth

Read more: visit http://keystoneind.wordpress.com/tag/pro-form-mouthguards/
This was posted on Keystone Industries (Pro Form) Blog -  October 3, 2013

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