Abstract

Introduction: The purpose of this study is to compare the effectiveness of the manual toothbrush, the electric toothbrush and the ultrasonic toothbrush, in the removal of dental plaque in dental students.

Materials and Methods: It is a comparative cross-sectional epidemiological study. 50 students in the 5th year of the dental school of Casablanca were selected to participate in this study. All subjects had to be in good general health and had complete dentition without malocclusions. They were required to stop oral hygiene for 12 hours and any food or beverage consumption for 4 hours before each of the three appointments during which the plaque index was recorded before and after the brushing with the toothbrush attributed tooth that day. The brushing time was 3 min for manual brushing, and 2 min for electric and ultrasonic brushing.

Results: In our study all toothbrushes significantly reduced plaque index after brushing:

A very significant difference between the reduction in the average plaque index obtained after manual brushing and that obtained after ultrasonic brushing in favor of the ultrasonic toothbrush. (p=0.0003)

An insignificant difference between the reduction of the average Plaque Index obtained after manual brushing and that obtained after electric brushing in favor of the electric toothbrush. (p=0.0982)

An insignificant difference between the reduction in the Plaque Index average obtained after electric brushing and that obtained after ultrasonic brushing in favor of the ultrasonic toothbrush. (p=0.0922)

Conclusion: The three toothbrushes managed to reduce the amount of plaque after brushing. The ultrasonic toothbrush is significantly better than the manual toothbrush in removing the plaque.

Keywords: Manual toothbrush; Electric toothbrush; Ultrasonic toothbrush; Comparative study;Dental plaque control