No mouth guards worn in Ireland

No mouth guards worn in Ireland
 

Almost 80 per cent of Irish primary schoolchildren do not wear mouth guards when playing contact sports, putting them at risk of dental injury, new research has found. More than two-thirds of children played between one and three sports, with Gaelic football, soccer and basketball the most popular.

The study, published in the current issue of the Journal of the Irish Dental Association, found overall that 22 per cent of those surveyed wore mouth guards or gumshields while engaged in sport.

Some 60 per cent of children playing rugby used mouth guards, while for hurling fewer than one in 10 did. Despite the high numbers playing basketball, just 4 per cent of participants said they wore mouth guards.

More than two-thirds of parents said none of the sports clubs their child attended had a policy on mouth guards. Significantly more boys than girls wore the protective devices; children were also more likely to wear them where the club they were attending had a mouth guard policy. According to parents, most national schools did not have a policy on their use.

Reasons for not wearing a mouth guard included cost, lack of information and the absence of a mouth guard policy in the club or school. In terms of sports-related accidents, one in 10 parents said their child had been involved in such an accident in the past year. Just over half of these accidents involved injury to teeth and some 72 per cent required treatment from a dentist within two hours of the injury.

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