North Texas Dentistry Volume 9 Issue 6 2019 ISSUE 6 DE | Page 18

Texas A&M College of Dentistry
Going for
the Mold
Ice-loving athletes can avoid rattled teeth
in pursuit of Olympic glory
by Kathleen Green Pothier
A need for speed eclipsed any thoughts
of dental safety for U.S. bobsled, luge
and skeleton athletes, despite their
treacherous runs down icy chutes. That
is, until now.
For the first time, the men’s and women’s
winter sports teams converged on Lake
Placid, New York, in late September to be
fitted for mouthguards. Oral protection
hadn’t even been on these Olympic-
focused sports teams’ radar until recently,
says Dr. Danette McNew ’88, not even
for one athlete whose mom is a dentist.
She asked team members how their teeth
feel while barreling full speed ahead dur-
ing runs.
“They say they have rattling teeth; they
feel their teeth hitting together,” says
McNew, an adjunct assistant professor at
Texas A&M College of Dentistry. “They’re
more concerned about speed. They are
going so fast, but they have a helmet.”
Securing those rattling teeth was Goal
Number One as McNew and seven other
dentists from across the nation spent sev-
eral days making 270 upper and lower
mouthguards. McNew personally made
60. In conjunction with the Academy
for Sports Dentistry, this select group
of dental professionals specializes in
mouthguard fabrication for athletes, in-
cluding those headed to the Olympics.
McNew and fellow dentists
who joined her in Lake Placid
are among the United States
Olympic Committee’s national
medical providers.
each other,” says McNew, 2019 Excel-
lence in Clinical Teaching Award winner.
All three sports have their own unique is-
sues and needs, as McNew found out.
Lugers, riding either solo or as a two-per-
son team, lay flat on their backs and
travel feet first. Because their heads lay
back, lugers’ teeth rattle from incisal edge
to edge, she says. The specialists took this
into consideration, as well as how to
maintain their lower jaw, allowing for
protrusion while in action.
“They liked the lower guards because
they were less bulky and they could talk
easier,” she says. “A luger said that when
he’s running and pushing forward, he’s
“We’ve helped a lot of other U.S.
Olympic sports like karate, box-
ing, and weight lifting,” she says.
Just not these winter athletes.
Over six days, McNew and her
cohorts queried the athletes
about details of their sport to
contemplate how best to pro-
tect their teeth.
“Since they have full face shields, it is not
as critical to fabricate a mouthguard that
covers the leading edge of teeth. Our goal
is more to prevent the pounding and
chattering of the teeth banging against
18 NORTH TEXAS DENTISTRY | www.northtexasdentistry.com
speaking to his team constantly. Appar-
ently they’re yelling at each other. The
energy is just fascinating.”
Upper mouthguards were made as usual,
almost like a miniature denture, she says.
The lower, or mandibular, arch guards