A clinical comparison between anchorless toothbrushes and a conventional anchor toothbrush

Compared with the conventional toothbrush in which the bristles are anchored to the brush head, the anchorless toothbrush has a thinner brush head and it is considered to be easier in the mouth. We report herein on a clinical evaluation between two types of novel anchorless toothbrush. The purpose of this study was to compare the plaque removal efficacy of three toothbrushes used in the scrubbing brushing method: Toothbrush S had a 2.5 mm brush head thickness, 9.0 mm bristle height and end-tapered bristles with an anchorless brush filling; Toothbrush N had a 5.0 mm brush head thickness, 9.0m m bristle height and end-tapered bristles; and Toothbrush M had a 2.9 mm brush head thickness, 9.5 mm bristle height and end-rounded bristles with anchorless brush filling. Plaque was evaluated on 12 teeth which consisted of Ramfjörd teeth (16,21,24,36,41,44) and the other molars (17,26,27,37,46,47). As the subjects with the standardized tooth brushing technique, 26 students in the second year of the dental hygienist course were enrolled in this study. The results showed that the rate of plaque reduction of toothbrush S was the highest followed by those of toothbrush N and toothbrush M in decreasing order. Especially in molars, toothbrush S (46.9 %) showed a higher rate of plaque reduction compared with toothbrush M (32.4 %) and N (33.2 %). The difference in the rate of plaque reduction following the use of toothbrush S was statistically significantly less than toothbrush M (p< 0.05). These results indicated that the higher plaque removal efficacies of toothbrush S compared with toothbrush N might have been achieved by the bristle height, and the plaque removal efficacy is clear particularly in the molars. Nihon Shishubyo Gakkai Kaishi (J Jpn Periodontol) 50(2) : 104-111, 2008.