Comparative Study of the Plaque Removal Efficacy of Three Types of Toothbrushes in Patients with Fixed Orthodontic Appliances

Introduction: Patients undergoing orthodontic treatment with fixed appliances have a challenging oral hygiene situation because brackets tenaciously trap food and other oral debris. Good plaque control is an important factor in the maintenance of dental health during fixed appliance therapy. Many different types of specially designed toothbrushes have been developed in recent years in order to improve the plaque removal. One of these new developments is a manual triple headed brush which is called 'superbrush' which is intended to clean the oral, buccal and occlusal surfaces of the teeth at one time. A clinical study was planned to evaluate the effectiveness of plaque removal by using the new triple headed toothbrush compared to the conventional manual toothbrush and an orthodontic toothbrush. Methods: A total of 75 patients, aged between 18 and 28 years, were equally divided into three groups: Group I (triple headed toothbrush), group II (orthodontic toothbrush) and group III (conventional toothbrush). The gingival index (Loe and Silness, 1963) and plaque index (Turesky Gilmore and Glickman, 1962) were recorded at baseline, month 1, month 2, month 3 and month 4, and results were subjected to statistical analysis utilizing ANOVA one way and multiple comparison Tukey’s HSD test. Results: Comparison of the mean gingival and plaque index scores and difference in mean plaque scores between the groups was done and found to be statistically significant (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The study indicated that the triple headed toothbrush was more efficient in reduction of plaque scores and improvement in gingival index scores overall, and more effective in removal of plaque from tooth surfaces compared to the other two toothbrushes.