Effectiveness of musical toothbrush on oral debris and gingival bleeding among 6-10-year-old children: A randomized controlled trial.

Abstract

Motivation serves to be an integral part of health promotion to children at the learning phase of their life. Evaluation of the effectiveness of musical toothbrush over regular toothbrush in the debris and gingival bleeding scores among children. This was a single-blinded parallel, randomized controlled trial conducted among 6-10-year-old schoolchildren in Chennai. One hundred participants with allocation ratio of 1:1 were assigned to musical and regular toothbrush group by simple randomization. After baseline evaluation (T0) of Debris Index-Simplified (DI-S) and Gingival Bleeding Index (GBI), outcome variables were assessed for a period of 3 months (T1, T2, and T3). Friedman test and Mann-Whitney statistical test were used to compare the outcome variables within and across the two groups. Thirty-two boys and 68 girls (mean age: 8.53 years) participated in the study. Statistically significant difference was seen in DI-S score among musical toothbrush group (mean: 0.50 [T3] and GBI score: 8.18% [T3]) when compared to regular toothbrush group (mean: 1.59 [T3] and GBI score: 23.54 [T3]) at the end of the 3rd month. Although both the musical and regular toothbrushes effectively reduced the DI-S and GBI scores, former showed effective change among children when compared to the latter.