Sport guards are very important because they provide protection. Primarily, they protect your teeth but potentially they can protect an athlete against concussions. How does a sport guard protect teeth? Why does this injury come about in the first place? Well, 60% of dental-facial injuries happen while playing sports. Out of these injuries 10 to 20% have to do with broken teeth, so you can imagine the huge amount of patients, especially nowadays where a lot of kids go to play sports. You can imagine the increasing number of patients that can potentially have an injured tooth while playing a sport. Whether it is the tooth gets completely knocked out or broken in half, a sports guard can help you protect them. Of course it’s not a silver bullet, nothing is, but it’s a next layer of protection for an athlete.

What’s the difference between getting a sports guard off the shelf as opposed to going through your dentist or your orthodontist to get a custom-made one? Well, I’ll tell you. Recently we worked on a football team, we did the entire football team, we customized the guard with the team of the school. On one side we had the player’s last name, on the other side we have the logo of the school. We had helmet straps, the entire if you will, and so when the athletes were to try this on they immediately told us that it was like night and day. That before they had guards off the shelf, but they did not feel nearly as comfortable and they never felt as protected, if you will, as they had with this custom-made appliance. I guess that’s the difference with anything you get off the shelf or custom-made, level of detail that goes into one of these appliances far surpasses anything you could ever find in a shelf. That’s why they are of huge value in terms of performance, but also in terms of protection for patients.