Treatment Success and User-Friendliness of An Electric Toothbrush App: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Electronic and mobile health (eHealth/mHealth) are rapidly growing areas in medicine and digital technologies are gaining importance. In dentistry, digitalization is also an emerging topic, whereby more and more applications are being offered. As an example, using real-time feedback, digital application software (an app) was designed to help users brush their teeth more accurately. However, there is no data on the effectiveness and haptic of such apps. Therefore, a single-blinded, randomized controlled clinical trial was designed: twenty volunteers received an electric toothbrush with an associated app to assess whether the app-assisted toothbrushing is better than without. After a short period of familiarization with the electric toothbrush, plaque index (O‘Leary et al. 1972) was recorded and subjects were assigned to the test (with app; n = 10) or the control group (no app; n = 10). At the end of the 2-week pilot study period, plaque was again assessed and participants in the test group completed a questionnaire about the app’s user-friendliness. Statistical analysis revealed no significant differences between the test and control groups. The plaque index improved on average by 8.5% points in the test and 4.7% points in the control group. Fifty percent of the test group participants were of the opinion that they had achieved better cleaning results and would recommend the app to others, although the app contributed only marginally to increased plaque removal. However, such apps may nevertheless be helpful as motivational tools, especially when tracking and monitoring cleaning data. Therefore, more development and research on this topic is indicated.

The Impact of Innovation of Electric Toothbrush

“…Undoubtedly, the increasing popularity and market share of electric toothbrushes is attributed to their higher effectiveness at maintaining oral health [5]. While most of the studies covered in this paper have associated improved oral cleanliness with using electric toothbrushes, a cross-sectional study conducted by Petker et al in 2019 did not observe any notable differences between electric and manual toothbrushes on oral cleanliness among daily users [6].…”

Smartphone Applications in Dentistry: A Scoping Review

“…Figure 1 below describes the flow chart of the review process. Table S3 (Supplementary Materials) shows the studies excluded from this review and the reasons for exclusion [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40].…”

Development and evaluation of the “Toothbrushing Timer with Information on Toothbrushes” application: A prospective cohort pilot study

“…We used a 1‐month follow‐up period, following previous studies that used a 1‐month follow‐up period (Van Leeuwen et al, 2019 ; Shida et al, 2020 ). There are also other studies that used different follow‐up periods to assess the efficacy of a mobile app, for example, 2 weeks (Humm et al, 2020 ), 1 week (Jacobson et al, 2019 ), and 6 weeks (Ki et al, 2021 ). Long‐term intervention tends to result in users becoming bored with using digital devices (Shida et al, 2020 ), such as e‐learning materials and mobile apps.…”

“…The determined sample size in this study was 20 participants, according to Humm et al ( 2020 ), because their pilot study report concerning a toothbrushing application was also similar to our study protocol.…”