Wear Comparison of a Plain Toothbrush versus Eleven Commercial Toothbrushes

Objective: To compare the wear of the Sound Feelings SOFT Plain Toothbrush 47 tuft (flat bristles) versus eleven manual toothbrushes. Methods: Twelve brand-new manual toothbrushes (n = 35 in each group) were used for comparison. Each toothbrush was run on a toothbrushing simulator with a brushing force of 2N for approximately 2 hours to simulate 1 month of toothbrushing (9,333 strokes @ 45° lingual of posterior teeth, 9,333 strokes on the top surface, and 9,333 strokes @ 45° buccal of posterior teeth), using the Bass technique on a quadrant typodont. Wear was measured by wear index and wear rating. The Wear index measures the degree of bristle splaying whereby the bristles spread apart and take on a permanent curvature. Wear rating is a subjective rating scale consisting of a series of four numbers increasing from zero to three. The Olympus SZX16 microscope was used to measure the wear rating then was inputted into a formula and averaged. The subjective wear seen as bristle splay/ curling was also measured and recorded. Comparison of the wear index and wear rating between each manual toothbrush was conducted using the Mann-Whitney test. Results: Wear index and wear rating for all toothbrushes ranged from 0.03 to 0.34 and from 0.57 to 2.06, respectively. There was a significant difference in the wear index between each toothbrush and the Sound Feelings SOFT Plain toothbrush. The difference in the wear rating was significant between the Sound Feelings SOFT Plain toothbrush and all other toothbrushes other than the Reach Advanced Design Soft toothbrush. Conclusion: The Sound Feelings SOFT Plain Toothbrush had the lowest wear rating and index among all the manual toothbrushes tested.