Aetiology

How do traumatic dental injuries occur?

The most common cause of dental injuries in both the primary and permanent dentition are due to accidental falls

The majority of dental injuries involve the anterior teeth particularly the maxillary central incisors.

Risk factors:

Oral factors: protruded maxillary incisors and incompetent lips

Environmental determinants: social deprivation (dental trauma cases are higher in lower socio-economic groups with a higher risk of recurrent injuries in this group)

Human behaviour: risk-taking children, children being bullied, children with learning difficulties, and lack of properly fitting mouthguards while playing contact sports.

What does the evidence tell us?

The data presented below represents evidence from a total of 1769 adult patients seen and treated over a 7 year period within King’s Dental Trauma Centre from 2012 to 2018. There may be regional variation in the aetiology of dental trauma.

^{King’s Dental Trauma Centre 2012–2018}

Injuries related to gender

Adult males presented with dental trauma more frequently.

This data is consistent with reported studies which indicate that males tend to experience more dental trauma in the permanent dentition than females. Previous studies show no differences between the sexes in the primary dentition.

Dental trauma injuries related to cause

Accidents as a result of accidental falls and assault were the most common causes of dental trauma in this group.

Data from previous studies also indicate falls as the most common cause of injury but with sports injuries the second most likely cause.

^{King’s Dental Trauma Centre 2012–2018}

^{King’s Dental Trauma Centre 2012–2018}

Types of injuries

Data from the 1769 patients in the study included 4062 injuries. Highlighting that traumatic dental injuries do not always occur in isolation and often present as multiple injury types, in one or multiple teeth.

Luxations were found to be more common than fracture injuries. Previous studies have shown uncomplicated crown fractures (without pulp exposure) to be the most common injury in the permanent dentition. Concussion, subluxation and luxation injuries are more common in the primary dentition.

How do these type of injuries happen?