Dental injuries are the most frequent type of orofacial injury sustained during participation in sports and most are preventable through wearing a well fitting mouth protectors. The major means used for the prevention of intraoral trauma in sports is the athletic mouth protectors. In 1962, a mandatory mouth guard rule was adopted in USA by the National Alliance Football Rules Committee. From that time, these measures proved successful in reducing the incidence of oral injuries. But in Korea, there are few reports- on the fabrication or usage of mouth protectors.
In this study, mechanical properties of mouth protector materials were evaluated, and these results can be used as basic. data for the research of mouth protectors in Korea. Tensile, tear and compressive properties of three kinds of mouth protector materials were tested before and after thermocyling in acid added
artificial saliva for 500 and 1,000 cycles. From this experiment, the following results were obtained.
1. Comparing the tensile strength of three materials before thermocycling, the tensile. strength of SPO was significantly lower than that of BIO2.0 and B103.0(p<0.05).
2. The tensile strength of BIO was not changed significantly after thermocycling for 1,000 cycles. However, that of DOU was in decreasing trend and that of SPO increased significantly after thermocycling(p<0.05).
3. The tear strength of SPO was significantly higher than those of BIO and DOU
in before-thermocycling condition(p<0.05).
4. The tear strength of BlO 3.0 increased significantly after thermocyclig for 1,000 cycles(p<0.05). However, there was no significant change after thermocycling in all the other materials.
5. Comparing the compressive properties of the same material before and after thermocycling, the elastic modulus ratio, compression at maximum force and toughness increased significantly after thermocycling in most of the materials (p<0.O5).
|