comparative assessment of a standard oral hygiene regimen with and without mouthwash and related clinical findings over a 14-day period

background and aims. the goal of this study was to evaluate the clinical efficacy of a standard oral hygiene routine (daily tooth brushing and flossing) along with cetylpyridinium chloride (cpc) mouthwash in comparison to the same pro-tocol without mouthwash in chronic periodontitis patients during a 14-day period. materials and methods. this comparative study was carried out or 50 non-smoking patients with chronic periodontitis; 25 patients followed an oral hygiene regimen using a toothbrush and dental floss (control group) and the remaining 25 used the mentioned protocol along with cpc mouthwash (test group) for 14 days. the plaque index (pi), modified gingival index (mgi) and probing pocket depth (ppd) were assessed. wilcoxon and mann-whitney u tests were used to evaluate and compare the prevalence of indices between the two groups. statistical significance was set at p<0.05. results. the results showed greater improvement of mgi in the test group (p=0.001). no statistically significant differences were observed in pi (p=0.47) and ppd (p=0.43) between the two groups. conclusion. adding mouthwash to a standard oral hygiene regimen may improve some clinical gingival parameters when compared with an oral hygiene routine without a mouthwash.