Protect your child’s teeth from sports injuries with a mouth guard!
As a parent, you take great care making sure that your child athlete has all the team gear and other essentials for their favorite sports. Summer sports are right around the corner and with them comes the threat of mouth and facial-related injuries that can send kids to to the dentists—or worse—emergency rooms. Are you taking the necessary steps to safeguard your child’s mouth from unnecessary injury with a very affordable, protective device called the mouth guard?
With April being National Facial Protection Month, let’s take a look at the jaw-dropping facts about sports-related injuries:
- According to the American Dental Association, an estimated 12 million people, ages 5 through 22, experience a sports-injury annually, which leads to approximately $33 billion in healthcare costs.
- It is estimated that more than 5 million teeth are knocked out or lost each year through a sports injury, accident or just good old-fashioned playtime.
- During one single season, athletes have a 1 in 10 chance of suffering a facial or dental injury.
- Studies show that athletes are 60 times more likely to suffer injury to the mouth when they are not wearing mouth guards.
- In fact, the use of mouth guards prevents approximately 200,000 oral-facial injuries per year.
- Unfortunately, the American Association of Orthodontics (AAO) found that 67 percent of parents do not compel their children to wear a mouth guard for organized sports.
- According to Safe Kids Worldwide, 62 percent of sports-related injuries actually occur during practice.
- Let’s not forget the costs! Mouth guards are considerably less expensive versus the treatment for an injury! According to the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD), treatment for losing a tooth can be costly over a lifetime, ranging between $5,000 and $20,000.
Oftentimes parents don’t think twice about helmets, sports pads and kneepads for protective gear against sports-related injuries, but as you can see by these startling statistics, mouth guards are an equally important part to the injury prevention equation.
Choosing the right mouth guard for your child can be difficult and time-consuming, so check our blog next week for tips on who should wear mouth guards and how to choose the right one for your child.