title: The clinical effect of a newly designed electric toothbrush on supragingival plaque, gingivitis and gingival bleeding.
abstract: A clinical study was carried out in an attempt to assess the efficacy of a newly designed electric toothbrush compared to a conventional manual toothbrush using the American Dental Association's protocol for evaluating toothbrushes. An Oral-B 35 manual toothbrush, which served as the control, was compared to the Plaq & White125 electric toothbrush. Examinations were performed by two calibrated examiners at baseline, day 15 and day 30. Examinations included the gingival index, plaque index and bleeding index. Mean indices were calculated and compared between the two brushes using the repeated measures multiple analysis of variance. No statistically significant differences between the mean indices on the three examination days were observed following the use of the manual or the electric toothbrushes. The results of this study demonstrate that the electric toothbrush was numerically more effective than the manual toothbrush in reducing supragingival plaque levels, either before or after brushing, at each examination date compared to baseline plaque values. However, this difference was not statistically significant. This and other findings concluded that the Plaq & White toothbrush is comparable to the control ADA-accepted toothbrush.
authors.affiliation: Hebrew University-Hadassah Faculty of Dental Medicine, Jerusalem, Israel.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stabholz
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Babayof
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mann
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003773:Dental Plaque / Q000517:prevention & control*; D003774:Dental Plaque Index; D004867:Equipment Design; D005891:Gingivitis / Q000517:prevention & control; D006801:Humans; D010512:Periodontal Index; D016037:Single-Blind Method; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D014099:Toothbrushing / Q000295:instrumentation*