Evaluation of the efficiency of cleaning dental plaque on titanium using a cavitating jet

Abstract

Dental plaque, which adheres to the surfaces of dental implants and remains in the gingival crevices, can cause peri-implantitis, which is similar to periodontal disease; consequently, cleaning the dental plaque from these surfaces is very important. In recent times, in order to improve their biocompatibility, the surfaces of these implants have been roughened. This has made it very difficult to remove the dental plaque from pits introduced into the surface to roughen it using oral toothbrushes. As the impacts caused by a cavitating jet can clean metallic surfaces, the jet can remove the plaque from these implants. As expected, dental plaque varies depending on each individual's oral conditions, so the distribution in the cleaning efficiency is scattered. In this paper, we propose a method for evaluating the efficiency of cleaning dental plaque on titanium. Dental plaque was allowed to accumulate on titanium plates placed on stents in the mouths of volunteers for three days. After removing the plates from the stents, they were exposed to a cavitating jet. The area cleaned on each plate was measured by dyeing. In order to investigate the effect of the surface roughness of the plate, a mirror finished plate and a roughened plate were used. It was concluded that the cavitating jet can clean dental plaque and that the residual dental plaque RDP (%) can be expressed by RDP = 100e^–at where t is the exposure time to the jet and a is a constant representing the cleaning efficiency.