Sports Mouthguards
in Merrick, NY

If you have a child or are personally involved in a high risk contact sport and are concerned about the safety of your teeth, a custom laminated pressure-formed mouthguard is the most protective.

Commercially available store bought athletic mouthguards available for a few dollars are a tempting purchase. Thinking that these guards will protect your athlete from bodily harm is wrong! Sports medicine experts have estimated that 80% of the currently worn mouthguards are ineffective or may even be more dangerous than not wearing a mouthguard at all.

The cost of a custom athletic mouthguard is small compared to the cost of a traumatic oral injury. Replacing a knocked out or shattered tooth may easily cost in excess of $5,000 initially, not to mention the lifetime maintenance costs. More than 5 million teeth are knocked out annually due to sports related trauma. A parent certainly doesn’t want their child to be counted in that statistic! A quality custom athletic mouthgard offers 9 times the protection of inexpensive store-bought guards and gives a parent the peace of mind to know their child is well protected orally.

Please watch this highly informative video on sports mouthguards.

Types of Sports Mouthguards

Stock Mouthguards

These are inexpensive, quite worthless and can be purchased at sporting goods stores. They are tray-like and do not fit the teeth at all. When a blow is received to the mouth they are forced backwards in the mouth, contacting only a few of the front teeth potentially resulting in severe harm. Stock mouthguards are a dangerous, unacceptable option.

Boil-and-Bite Mouthguards

These too are available at sporting goods stores and are arguably the most common type in use. Unfortunately, they offer only minimally better protection from severe oral injury than stock mouthguards. They fit poorly to the teeth, thin out over time, tend to be chewed through after a few months, and require that the athlete consciously keep their jaws together. This is both uncomfortable and a distraction while engaged in a sport. Boil-and-bite mouthguards are cheap, give a false sense of protection, and are not an acceptable mean of preventing severe injury to the teeth and surrounding gum and bone.

Vacuum-Formed Mouthguards

Most dentists make these mouthguards in their office. They are quickly fabricated on a vacuum device that draws a stock mouthguard material over a previously made stone cast poured from an impression of the patient’s mouth. The resulting mouthguard has only fair adaption and the thickness of the guard material is uneven. The quality of protection received from this type of mouthguard is still extremely inadequate. There is a much better option available.

Custom Laminated Pressure-Formed Mouthguards

This type of mouthguard is the best and is custom made for an exact fit to the mouth using highly accurate impression material. It is designed specifically for the sport it will be used for, and a choice of colors and patterns is available. Excellent adaption to the teeth and surrounding gum tissue is provided so that when a blow is received the forces are more evenly distributed and dissipated over all the teeth and gums. This provides optimum protection against injury.

We have our lab fabricate them using 2-to-3 layers of EVA material. Their exact design is dependent upon the amount of trauma absorption needed for a particular sport. EVA, ethyl vinyl acetate, is a dense, durable, shock absorbing material and is BPA free. Laminated pressure-formed custom sports mouthguards provide the most utmost protection for your children’s teeth during contact sports.