| Abstrakt: |
In many sports, use of a mouthguard is recommended in recent years for the purpose of preventing oro-facial structures from sports related injuries. However, mouthguards are not at all popular in soccer. To encourage the use of mouthguards in this game, this survey was performed on 26 high school soccer players (average 16.9 years old) wearing a custom—made mouthguard made by the authors. The provided mouthguards had special features such as covering only upper dentition not gingiva, made from harder EVA sheet (Drufosoft Pro ®, Dreve), one layer type but made by an air—pressure machine with partial lamination to obtain full balanced occlusion, and so on. The following results were obtained. No one (0.0%) had been using a mouthguard before receiving our mouthguard and the usage rate after offer was 92.3%. Regarding the usage situation, the most common answer (32.0%) was ‘always use it during both practice and game’. Regarding the injury preventive effect of the mouthguard, ‘it is effective’ was 73.1%, ‘it is ineffective’ was 11.5% and ‘cannot judge’ was 15.4%. Regarding the necessity of making mouthguards obligatory, ‘it is not required’ was 57.7%, ‘it is required’ was 19.2% and ‘cannot judge’ was 23.1%. Concerning the wearing feeling of the mouthguard, ‘satisfaction’ was 79.2% about the feeling of the fit, and both ‘the size (buccal side)’ and ‘the size (palatal side)’ were 66.7%, ‘thickness’ 54.2%, ‘taste’ 50.0%, ‘hardness’ 75.0% and ‘color’ 70.8%. On the contrary, ‘dissatisfaction’ was 62.5% about ‘pronunciation’, ‘respiratory’ 50.0% and ‘smell’ 41.7%. Therefore, it is thought that the players' satisfaction with and understanding of mouthguards could be obtained by offering appropriate mouthguards even in soccer. Follow-up surveys and investigations about the effect of mouthguards are required for mouthguard popularization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
