An analysis of athletes' knowledge, acceptance and usability toward custom-made mouthguards: uncontrolled before–after study

Background Dentofacial trauma in sports is considered a major public oral health problem. Despite the recommendation to use mouthguards in several sports, their use routinely for training and competition is still very low. Aims An uncontrolled before–after interventional study was performed to evaluate athletes’: (1) knowledge about mouthguard (2) acceptance evaluating before vs after use custom-made mouthguard, and (3) usability comparing boil-and-bite vs custom-made mouthguard. Methods Sixty amateur athletes participated in the study. A custom-made mouthguard was produced for each athlete. All athletes answered two questionnaires: (1) knowledge about mouthguards and (2) visual analogue scale (VAS) regarding the parameters: comfort, fit, stability, tiredness, thirsty, dry mouth, nausea, communication, ability to drink, breath, altered taste, and protection. VAS was applied at three different moments: (1) about boil-and-bite mouthguard (questionnaire applied only to athletes who had already used this dispositive), (2) before the delivery of the custom-made mouthguard, (3) after a familiarization period of 30 days using custom-made mouthguard. For statistical analyses, Wilcoxon test was used with a level of significance set at 5% ( p < 0.05). Results Forty-four athletes knew or had seen a mouthguard and twenty athletes already used the boil-and-bite mouthguard. Acceptance increased in all parameters analyzed after the use of custom-made mouthguards when compared to before using them. Communication had the worst results considering all parameters assessed. However, communication evaluation increased significantly with the use of custom-made mouthguard (3.64 ± 2.99: boil-and-bite; 8.93 ± 1.54: custom-made). Conclusions Although most athletes knew the mouthguards, most of them did not use this device routinely during training and competitions. The acceptance regarding the use of mouthguard was great. All parameters analyzed showed better usability with the custom-made mouthguard in comparison to boil-and-bite mouthguard.