The Safe Use of Tongue Brush : Stained Tongue Brushing Force in Subjects

Abstract

It is well known that tongue coating is the main cause of halitosis. Tongue coating consists of desquamative epithelial cells, leukocytes, saburra and bacteria. Mechanical tongue cleaning is used for treating physiologiohalitosis, and practitioners should always instruct their patients on how to brush their tongues to prevent harmful effects. The objective of this study was to compare a Dentalpro® tongue brush (2.5 mil filament) with commercially available tongue brushes and two experimentally designed tongue brushes (4 mil and 6 mil filament) for controlling the tongue brushing force. Thirty three subjects were instructed on how to use the three kinds of tongue brushes and brushed their tongue stained with Red-coat® thoroughly in their regular customary manner using a brushing force measuring apparatus. The results were analyzed using ANOVA/Scheffe's test and paired comparison t-test (p<0.05). As a result, the mean brushing force for the 2.5, 4.0 and 6.0 mil tongue brush groups were 61.3±39.7g, 56.8±50.0g and 49.3±20.7g respectively. The experimental tongue brush reduced the tongue brushing force compared with the Dentalpro® tongue brush, however, there was no statistically significant difference among the brushing force of the three tongue brushes. The force in the stained tongue group was 88.8±59.2g, and in the no-stained tongue group was 56.7±43.6g. The brushing force in the stained tongue group was statistically significantly higher than in the no-stained tongue group. This result suggested that brushing the tongue coating increased the tongue brushing force.