Effect of consequence-based visual education on oral hygiene outcomes: Randomized controlled clinical trial

Providing effective oral hygiene (OH) instructions is critical for preventive oral health care and oral health maintenance. The authors evaluated the effectiveness of video-based OH instructions alone vs video-based OH instructions supplemented with images highlighting the consequences of poor OH.

Healthy adults (aged 18-40 years) were randomly assigned to receive either video-based OH instructions alone (group 1 [G1]) or video-based OH instructions supplemented with consequence-based images (group 2 [G2]). Bleeding on probing (BOP), bleeding index (BI), and plaque score (PS) were recorded at baseline and 4-week follow-up. Between-group, within-group, and sex differences were analyzed using paired and unpaired t tests (P < .05).

Fifty-six participants were recruited for this study, with 28 participants in each group. Group differences were observed for PS only, which was 41.8% lower in G2 than in G1 at follow-up (P < .0001). Within-group reductions were -15.3% vs -44.0% for BOP, -27.8% vs -31.6% for BI, and -10.0% vs -53.4% for PS in G1 and G2, respectively. No significant sex-related differences were observed in BOP or BI; however, male and female participants in G2 had significantly lower PS scores than their counterparts in G1 (P = .001 and P = .011, respectively).

Although both interventions improved oral health, supplementing video instructions with consequence-based images achieved superior short-term plaque reduction, and the effect was consistent across sexes.

Incorporating images of poor OH outcomes into standard video-based education may enhance patient adherence to plaque control and represent a cost-effective tool for clinical practice. This clinical trial was registered at the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry. The registration number is ACTRN12624000048583.