Occlusal accommodation and mouthguards for prevention of orofacial trauma.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of two types of occlusal accommodation on the arch separation in centric and eccentric arch positions and to assess the opposing tooth contacts in professionally made, thermoformed sports mouthguards.

Materials And Methods: Maxillary and mandibular alginate impressions, a wax interocclusal record of centric occlusion together with maxillary/condylar face-bow registrations, were recorded clinically for 10 undergraduate dental students who are sports activist volunteers of the School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen's University Belfast. Two ethylene vinyl acetate thermoformed maxillary mouthguards were made for each player (N = 20) using a standardised procedure.

Post thermoforming dimensional changes of ethylene vinyl acetate used in custom-made mouthguards for trauma prevention--a pilot study.

It is important that mouthguards have an adequate thickness of material if they are to be effective in the prevention of trauma. The aim of this study was to quantify dimensional changes that occur on thermoforming ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) sheets used in the construction of mouthguards. Fourteen batches of 3 mm thick sheet EVA were thermoformed over dental models under a number of common processing conditions including, model height, inclination, shape and model temperature, model position on thermoforming platform, plasticizing time and evacuation method.