2012 Volume 46 Issue 2 Pages 245-249
Successful dental implant treatment requires thorough oral self care by the patient, and depends, to a large extent, on improving the patient's understanding and behavior with regard to self care. We developed a personalized oral hygiene instruction program and attempted to demonstrate its clinical utility based on changes in the intraoral environment with the aim of establishing a more effective oral instruction hygiene program than those conventionally offered. Patients were given a CD-ROM containing photos of their mouth and dental casts as well as instructions on how to perform self care, and were instructed to view them on their own personal computers. Changes in their plaque control record (PCR), in the prevalence of sites with pocket probing depths (PPD) of 4 mm or greater, and in bleeding on probing (BOP) were monitored. The results were examined in a retrospective cohort study. We found that patients who participated in the new instruction program exhibited a significant decline in all three outcome measures upon subsequent examination. The findings suggest that our instruction program made it easy for patients to understand their oral condition, and to learn and repeat appropriate self care practices.
