title: Players' attitudes to mouthguards and prevalence of orofacial injuries in the 1987 U.S. Rugby Football Team.
abstract: This report shows that although 95.4% of players in the U.S. Rugby Team believed mouthguards provided local protection, only half wore a mouthguard. However, 90.9% of mouthguard wearers would not play without their mouthguard and 54.5% believed wearing mouthguards should be made compulsory in rugby football. Approximately one-third of the team had sustained an orofacial injury that required treatment and none were wearing a mouthguard at the time of injury. These and other results are compared to an identical study of the 1984 Australian Rugby Team, the only previous such study reported.
authors.affiliation: Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, University of Queensland Dental School, Brisbane, Australia.
authors.forename: P J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Chapman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001294:Attitude to Health; D001315:Australia; D005151:Facial Injuries / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D005538:Football / Q000293:injuries* / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D009055:Mouth / Q000293:injuries*; D009064:Mouth Protectors; D014481:United States