Purpose: This in-vitro study aimed to investigate the cleaning efficacy of 18 different manual children’s toothbrushes applying horizontal, vertical, and rotational movements, as well as to evaluate the rounding of their filament ends.
Materials and methods: Models equipped with artificial teeth (coated with titanium dioxide) were brushed using a brushing machine with clamped manual children’s toothbrushes. The machine carried out horizontal, vertical, and rotational movements for 1 min with a constant contact pressure of 100 g. The percentage of the area of titanium dioxide removed from the buccal, mesial, distal and total surfaces of the artificial teeth corresponded to the cleaning efficacy. To assess the filament design, a scanning electron microscope was used to check the morphology of the filaments which was scored with Silverstone and Featherstone scale. SPSS 22 was used for data analysis.
Results: The rotational and the vertical movements achieved the best cleaning efficacy with all tested toothbrushes. The vast majority of the tested toothbrushes had their poorest cleaning efficacy in the horizontal movement. Only a small part of the children’s toothbrushes (3 out of 18) had a correct and acceptable proportion of rounded bristle ends.
Conclusions: Based on the present results, it could be concluded that the cleaning efficacy of different manual children’s toothbrushes varied considerably. The best cleaning efficacy was almost always observed for rotational and vertical movements.