Towards Performance Requirements for Athletic Mouth Protectors
CE: 0.5
Description: Mouth protectors, sometimes referred to as mouthguards, are used in many impact sports where there is risk of orofacial injury. Research assessing their efficacy as injury protection devices is commonly epidemiological and attempts to show whether or not their use results in net positive or negative effects on injury rate and severity. While statistical approaches can indicate trends in rate and severity, they cannot indicate the design attributes (e.g. material choice, extent of coverage of oral anatomy) that result in effective protection. This presents challenges when designing rigorous, biomechanically valid, engineering approaches for assessing the protective performance of mouth protectors. Such approaches are necessary to advance the goal of continual improvement in protective gear. Focusing on injury biomechanics, the talk will begin by discussing typical paradigms used to assess head protection equipment with emphasis on the challenges associated with defining and justifying performance metrics. The talk will cover biomechanical research and open questions related to orofacial protection in impact sports and conclude with discourse on translating biomechanical research towards standardized test methods that quantify performance of mouth protectors.
At the conclusion, participants should be able to:
- Inform on current discourse related to dental protection in the biomechanics community
- Inform on current efforts towards developing performance standards.
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Christopher R Dennison
Chris Dennison is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Alberta, A tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Instrumentation, and a professional engineer in the province of Alberta (Canada). His research focuses on developing instrumentation and methods for studies in trauma biomechanics. He is an active participant in the North American standards community, focusing on equipment for head protection.
Christopher R Dennison
I declare that I have no proprietary, financial, or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service, course, and/or company, or in any firm beneficially associated therewith, that will be discussed or considered during the proposed presentation.
