Abstract:
Accidents during contact sport activities are one of the causes of orofacial
trauma. Many types of sports activities put participants at risk of orofacial injury.
Retrospective surveys of various groups of athletes have found that 10 to 61 % have
experienced at least one orofacial injury during their participation. However, most of
these types of injuries can be prevented with the use of properly fitted protective
athletic equipment. The majority of research studies suggest that an adequate thickness
of Ethylene Vinyl Acetate (EVA) mouthguard is 4 mm. Yet, 4 mm is too large and
would also be unsuitable neurophysiologically. It is necessary to consider player
comfort in addition to the energy absorption ability when determining the thickness
required for a mouthguard. Thus, new designs and material development of
mouthguards are necessary to fulfill this requirement.
The purpose of the study was to evaluate and compare two new
mouthguard designs both using a combination of EVA and light-polymerized acrylic
resin, one being a hard insertion model and the other a soft insertion model. A
conventional EVA mouthguard was used as a control. The mouthguards were
evaluated by using a load cell transducer with different total thicknesses of 3, 4 and 5
mm.
The results showed that the conventional EVA had greater shock absorbing
capability than 2 new designs. Light-polymerized acrylic resin may be too rigid to be
used with EVA. Further study should be done to identify materials or combinations of
material that would improve shock absorbing capability.