Evaluation of Three Common Denture Cleaners

Denture plaque has been shown to be responsible for a variety of soft tissue changes in many denture wearers. Proper routine cleaning of tissue surface of denture is essential to maintain healthy supporting tissue. The purpose of this study was to quantify and compare the effectiveness of common cleaning agents and toothpaste in the removal of denture plaque from the tissue surface of the maxillary complete dentures. Fourteen healthy edentulous patients were selected and complete denture were made for each of them. After the completion of the necessary adjustments, the patients were divided into control group (n=6) and treatment group (n= 8). Patients of the control group were requested to follow one test session to clean their dentures with a wet brush. And, the patients of the treatment group were also requested to follow 3 test sessions, consisting of cleaning using a toothbrush with: 1. toothpaste, 2. hand washing liquid soap and 3. bar mild bath soap. At each test session, every maxillary complete denture with 3 days accumulated plaque on the tissue side surfac'e, before and after treatment was disclosed with 4.5% mercurochrome dye and plaque accumulation was scored according to plaque index. The results showed that toothpaste, hand washing liquid soap or bar mild bath soap with the use of toothbrush has a highly significant (p<0.01) as compared to the control goup (p > 0.05) in the removal of denture plaque. The effectiveness of hand washing liquid soap was found to be statistically greater than the other two. It can be concluded that liquid soap can be used as a denture cleaner.