Dental and Oral Trauma Day focuses on prevention, treatment

Hockey season is just around the corner and while many will be focused on the players on the ice, some are looking out for their oral safety.

“Studies have shown that in the world, there are more than one billion people who have experienced dental trauma,” said Liran Levin, president of the International Association of Dental Traumatology.

“We know that hockey players in Canada, about 30 per cent of them, had experienced dental trauma.”

This prompted Levin to create the inaugural Global Dental and Oral Trauma Day.

Levin explained that there is not a lot of awareness about prevention and proper management of these kinds of injuries, and that the day brings the importance of prevention and treatment to the forefront.

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He added that most issues are being seen in the long term.

“When you break a bone and you have to go with a cast for a while, it heals and everything goes to normal; you do a little bit of physiotherapy, everything is good,” Levin said. “When you are breaking a tooth, sometimes it starts a lifelong cascade of events that you will need to address or treat this tooth until the last day of your life.”

The proper use of a mouthguard, particularly in sports, is one of the more important things someone can do to help prevent traumatic injuries. These and other quick responses could mean the difference between keeping your natural teeth, or having to deal with painful and expensive procedures like extractions, bone grafting and implants.

The International Association of Dental Traumatology has also launched a free app called ToothSOS, which outlines ways to both prevent and treat injuries should they ever happen.

“There is a section about prevention, but there’s also a section where you can click on what exactly happened to your teeth and then it will direct you to what to do immediately and where to go and how urgent it is,” Levin said.

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