Sports Dentistry
Russellville, AL
 Nearly 80 percent of all Americans participated in at least one sport last year, which means that many Americans understand the importance of physical health in living long and well.
While our dental office encourages physical activity because it improves overall health, we do not want you to sustain dental trauma from recreation. Here are some tips from Singing River Dentistry on sports dentistry and oral health for athletes.
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How Common Are Injuries to the Mouth While Playing Sports?
The American Dental Association estimates that 20 percent of all injuries occur in the facial or head area. That means one-fifth of all injuries may cause an issue with your dental health. Several sports-related dental injuries can cause temporary or permanent problems with your teeth, gums, and other structures in your mouth.
What Are the Most Common Dental Injuries?
Dentists see these dental emergencies fairly frequently in their practices. Here is a description of each of the most common dental injuries.
Cracked or Fractured Teeth
By far, the most common dental injury is a fractured or cracked tooth. Tooth fractures may be either superficial, which means only your outer layers of tooth enamel are cracked, or the fracture may go all the way through to the middle of your tooth. If your tooth fracture is minor, our dentist may smooth the tooth out and then leave it alone.
However, facial injuries can cause more severe tooth fractures. If your child is in immediate pain, you see swelling, or there is excessive bleeding, you need to call our office right away for an emergency appointment.
Tooth Avulsion
Sometimes, serious sports injuries include an avulsed tooth, which is the dental term for a tooth that has been knocked out of the tooth socket. Concussions, for example, can often occur with tooth avulsions. If a baby tooth has been knocked out, call our office and bring the tooth with you.
While you are calling our dentist, keep the following tips in mind:
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Be sure that if you find the tooth and pick it up, you are picking it up via the top of the tooth, called the crown, rather than the tooth root.
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If the tooth is dirty, rinse it with water or milk for 10 seconds. Do not scrub the tooth or use detergent.
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If your child lost a permanent tooth, have them place the tooth back inside their mouth and hold it in place, if possible, with a paper towel, napkin, or cloth. If you cannot replace the tooth, put it in a glass of milk, saliva, or a saline solution to preserve it. |
What if our dentist finds that the avulsed tooth is too damaged to be replaced? Often, dentists will not try to replace a baby tooth since it will fall out anyway, but permanent teeth are usually replaced if possible. If you lose a permanent tooth, you have lots of options for restorative dentistry.
A dental implant may be a great solution once your mouth heals after your injury. Dental implants restore your smile, and they look and feel like natural teeth. While most people who receive dental implants receive them because of gum disease or a decaying tooth, dental implants are used for trauma, such as a sports injury.
Mouth Cuts
Often, sports injuries inflict cuts in the mouth because your teeth, which are used to cut food, cut into your cheek, lip, or tongue instead. Your first step with a mouth cut is not to panic. Mouth injuries and facial injuries bleed more than other parts of your body because there are a lot of blood vessels in your face. Place ice near the area of the cut and call our dental office for an appointment. Depending on the size of the mouth cut, you may need sutures to close the wound.
Preventing Sports Injuries: Athletic Mouth Guards
Now that you understand how common sports injuries are, how can you protect your mouth or the mouth of a family member while playing? Our dentist offers athletic mouth guards, which are designed to protect your teeth while you play a sport.
Athletic mouth guards, also known as sports mouth guards, are protective devices that athletes wear over their upper teeth to help prevent oral injuries during sports. They can protect against broken teeth, cut lips, and other damage to the mouth, as well as impact blows to the jaw that could cause concussions.
The American Dental Association (ADA) recommends that athletes wear a properly fitted mouthguard in sports that involve contact, impact, or collision, such as basketball, boxing, football, and ice hockey.
Nearly all athletic mouthguards are made from different types of plastic. Our dentist will be able to tell you what type of mouth guard you need for the sport you play. Dentists also take into consideration the amount of dental work you have and how physical the sport you play is. Most people prefer to wear flexible soft mouth guards to absorb the force from contact sports and to make it easy to breathe through physical exertion.
Sports mouth guards are also sometimes called vacuum mouth guards because they hold onto your teeth when you are breathing in and out. Vacuum mouth guards can be adjusted for thickness depending on the type of sports you play or whether you have braces or dental implants.
How Our Dentist Can Help
If you or a family member sustains a sports injury to your face or head, it is critical that you call our office as soon as possible. We need a description of the mouth injury and will ask you some questions. Based on your answers, our dental team will decide if you have a dental emergency or if you or a family member can be seen the next day. It is important that you let our office know your pain level as well as any bleeding.
If you are not sure you need a sports mouth guard or you have questions about sports and your teeth, we are here to help. Why not give Singing River Dentistry a call at 256-460-4191? That way, we can set up an appointment for you as soon as possible.
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