Clinical sealant retention following two different tooth-cleaning techniques

This study compared the effectiveness of two different tooth-cleaning techniques on clinical sealant retention.

Seventy-four children in second and third grades at an elementary school in the rural town of Waverly, Tennessee, had sealants applied to four, noncarious, fully erupted, first permanent molar teeth. The teeth had been cleaned using a brush attached to a rotary instrument with fluoridated prophy paste, versus a toothbrush without paste (dry brushing). A split-mouth design was used, whereby one side (upper and lower) of the mouth was subject to one tooth-cleaning technique while the opposite side received the other technique.

Twelve months after a single application of pit and fissure sealant, 63 children were available for recall. Exactly 252 teeth were examined and overall retention was high, with approximately 98 percent of sealants retained. Although the greatest loss of sealant occurred with the rotary instrument technique, the difference in proportions of missing sealant between techniques was not statistically significant.

In this study, the tooth-cleaning technique of dry brushing with a toothbrush as a preparatory step in the sealant procedure yielded high clinical sealant retention at 12 months. This retention was comparable to that observed with rotary instrumentation. This finding suggests that dry brushing by the operator may be an acceptable alternative to using a rotary instrument with brush and paste.