Physical and Oral Injuries and Awareness of Mouthguard among Martial Arts Athletes in Nepal.

Purpose : The aim of this study was to determine the incidence of physical and oral injuries and mouthguard usage and awareness among Nepalese martial arts athletes. Materials and Methods : The total study population consisted of 103 (80 males, 23 females) Taekwondo and 40 (31 males, 9 females) Shotokan karate players. Data were collected by a standardized questionnaire about history of injuries along with the level of usage and awareness of mouthguards and statistically analyzed with the Chi-square test and Fisher's exact probability test (p<0.05). Results : Overall, 64.1% of Taekwondo players and 55.0% of Shotokan Karate players suffered from physical injuries. In particular, 25.2% of Taekwondo and 37.5% of Shotokan Karate players reported oral injuries. In Taekwondo, oral injuries were mainly laceration of oral soft tissues (47.2%), subluxation of tooth (11.1%), jaw contusion and fractured tooth (8.3%), concussion and avulsion (5.6%) and jaw dislocation and lateral luxation (2.8%). In karate, the types of injury were soft tissue lacerations (76.2%), dislocation of the jaws (9.5%), jaw fracture, tooth fracture and subluxation (4.8%). The incidence of oral soft tissue injury was significantly higher in karate players than in taekwondo players (p<0.01). Although 75.0% of karate and 14.5% of taekwondo players used a mouthguard, none of the players were familiar with custom made mouthguards. Conclusion : The high frequency of oral injuries suggests that it is necessary to provide sports safety education as well as encourage the utilization of mouthguards as a preventive measure to avoid serious dental trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]