A clinical comparison of two electric toothbrushes with different mechanical actions.

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of plaque removal of the Water Pik Automatic Toothbrush and Interplak brush versus the Oral B-40 manual brush. Thirty healthy patients having plaque on all tooth surfaces were admitted for this two-week, double-blind study. Patients served as their own control by brushing manually for one week, and then for a second week with a randomly-assigned electric brush. Three plaque indexes were scored at baseline, one week and two weeks. For all these indexes, results showed that the Water Pik Automatic Toothbrush removed significantly more plaque than manual brushing. The Interplak brush removed statistically more plaque than manual brushing only with the Turesky Index. The data for all indexes have a trend toward better plaque scores for patients who used the Water Pik Automatic Toothbrush. However, statistical analysis of these scores showed that both electric toothbrushes performed equally well.