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E-scooter-related dental injuries: a two-year retrospective review

British Dental Journal (2024)Cite this article

Abstract

Introduction In June 2020, the United Kingdom (UK) published guidance on electric scooter (e-scooter) use to ease transport congestion and reduce pollution. This study aims to examine dental injuries sustained during the two years following initiation of the trial.

Methods The research was conducted at a UK, Level 1, supra-regional major trauma centre. All eligible patient records were analysed to identify e-scooter-related dental injuries to the following regions: teeth, periodontium, alveolus, palate, tongue, floor of mouth, frenum, buccal mucosa and lips. To assess significant associations between recorded variables, a Pearson's chi-square test was utilised.

Results Of the 32 patients who experienced a total of 71 dental injuries, 46.5% (n = 33) affected teeth, predominantly upper central incisors (n = 17). ‘Lacerations' (n = 32) and ‘lips' (n = 30) were the most common type and site of soft tissue injuries, respectively. Unprovoked falls by riders accounted for 53.1% (n = 17) of the injuries. There was an overall increase in e-scooter-related dental injuries throughout the two-year period.

Conclusion E-scooters have introduced an additional source of dental trauma. It is imperative health care professionals can also identify signs of head and non-dental injuries when managing such patients. Further studies are warranted allowing for better informed and optimised dental public health interventions.

Key points

  • E-scooters are a new form of transport that can be the cause of hard tissue and soft tissue dental injuries.

  • E-scooter-related dental injuries are often related to head injuries, non-dental injuries and intoxication.

  • The rise in e-scooter-related dental injuries over the two-year period underscores the need for government-instigated e-scooter safety precautions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dental Core Trainee, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, Mindelsohn Way, Birmingham, B15 2GW, UK

    Junaid Rashid & Sophie Wu

  2. Junior Specialist Dentist, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, Mindelsohn Way, Birmingham, B15 2GW, UK

    Rajeevan Sritharan

  3. Consultant in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, Mindelsohn Way, Birmingham, B15 2GW, UK

    Kevin McMillan

Authors
  1. Junaid Rashid
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Contributions

Junaid Rashid: data extraction, data analysis, data interpretation, drafting of the article and final approval. Rajeevan Sritharan: data extraction, data analysis, data interpretation, drafting of the article and final approval. Sophie Wu: conception of idea, data analysis, data interpretation, illustrations, drafting of the article and final approval. Kevin McMillan: conception of idea, data interpretation, critical revisions, final approval, and guarantor of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Junaid Rashid.

Ethics declarations

The authors report no conflicts of interest. Formal ethical approval was not required as this was a retrospective cohort study. Approval was granted by the Clinical Audit and Research Management System which allowed a unique ID to be created for each of the two years of the study. This ID allowed a health informatics request to be completed to identify suitable patients from a dataset which was retrospectively analysed. The collected data was completely anonymised and non-identifiable, thus not requiring patient permissions.

Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

The original online version of this article was revised.

When initially published, the Fig 1 caption read: ‘Graph showing proportion of soft tissue injuries, dental injuries and their management'. This should have read ‘Graph showing proportion and management of hard and soft tissue dental injuries sustained'.

When initially published, there were errors in certain values within the abstract and main text. These have now been corrected.

Finally, when initially published, an incorrect version of Figure 3 was displayed, the values have been updated.

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Rashid, J., Sritharan, R., Wu, S. et al. E-scooter-related dental injuries: a two-year retrospective review. Br Dent J (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41415-024-7345-4

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