Background
PERIODONTAL DISEASE
Epidemiological studies have shown the prevalence of periodontal disease in Germany and worldwide [In line with the high prevalence of periodontal disease, however, several studies have shown that oral hygiene performance in a wide range of different age groups is inefficient in terms of oral cleanliness. Some studies also assessed brushing performance in terms of the distribution of brushing time across surfaces and sextants as well as of brushing movements [This raises the question, what do individuals change when they clean their teeth “as good as they can” instead of cleaning the teeth “as usual”? A better understanding of this can help to uncover patients’ misconceptions toward what constitutes a very good cleaning. As a first approach to answering this question, Deinzer et al. [This is a remarkable and disturbing result. This indicates that the patients’ concept of optimized brushing performance merely reflects an increase in brushing time. They do not seem to associate optimized brushing with an improvement in systematic brushing or with a change in the brushing technique in terms of brushing movements. However, prior to coming to such a conclusion, more research is needed. The former analysis [Thus, the aim of the present randomized controlled study was to compare the “best possible” vs. “usual” tooth brushing with respect to (a) brushing performance, (b) subjectively perceived oral cleanliness, and (c) objectively assessed oral cleanliness after brushing. The following three research hypotheses were tested: In comparison to the “brush as usual” instruction, the “brush to the best of one’s abilities” instruction will result in the following:
differences in brushing performance;better brushing outcome in terms of a higher degree of achieved oral cleanliness; and.a higher degree of subjectively perceived oral cleanliness.