# Oral health screening for sport

## TL;DR

This paper provides a guide for oral health screening in athletes to improve their overall health and performance.

## Contribution

It introduces clinical indices and questionnaires for assessing oral health issues specific to athletes.

## Key findings

- Oral health screening can identify dental caries, erosive toothwear, and periodontal diseases in athletes.
- Questionnaires help measure oral health behaviors and their impact on athlete performance and wellbeing.

## Abstract

Oral health is an essential component of general health and wellbeing, but there are many potential challenges to the oral health of athletes, including nutrition and hydration, exercise-induced immune suppression, lack of awareness, negative health behaviours and lack of prioritisation. Oral diseases should be preventable, and there are simple interventions that have good evidence of efficacy. Screening that allows early recognition of disease is well-established in healthcare as the first step in prevention of disease and promotion of positive health behaviours. This paper aims to provide an overview of the oral health problems that can be screened for in sport.

Provides a comprehensive guide to oral health screening for athletes.Describes the clinical indices for recording dental caries, erosive toothwear, periodontal diseases and orofacial trauma.Describes a useful questionnaire to measure impacts on athlete performance and wellbeing.Describes a useful questionnaire to measure oral health behaviours.

Provides a comprehensive guide to oral health screening for athletes.

Describes the clinical indices for recording dental caries, erosive toothwear, periodontal diseases and orofacial trauma.

Describes a useful questionnaire to measure impacts on athlete performance and wellbeing.

Describes a useful questionnaire to measure oral health behaviours.