Effectiveness of Home Disinfection of Dental Brushes through Chemical Methods

Oral hygiene gained a great deal of space in the daily lives of the population, with that the concern with the correct way to perform the hygiene and storage of the toothbrush. Bacterial plaque is one of the main causative agents of caries and periodontal disease, along with bacteria, fungi and viruses that are found within the oral cavity. The accumulation of biofilm and the lack of oral hygiene provide an ideal environment for the proliferation of microorganisms, increasing the risk of causing these diseases. In this regard, the toothbrush will serve as an important tool for removing plaque and these organisms. However, right after the first use of the brush, these microorganisms become lodged on the surface of the brush. In order to reduce the number of microorganisms, physical and chemical methods have emerged for disinfecting toothbrushes. Thus, this study aims to analyze the effectiveness of home disinfection of toothbrushes using chemical substances. This is an in vitro laboratory study in which brush hygiene was evaluated by immersion and spraying (n=3), with chlorhexidine, hydrogen peroxide, essential oils and distilled water, as a negative control, to serve as a comparison for microbial growth in Brain Heart Infusion Broth (BHI) culture medium. The result was evaluated according to the transparency of the culture medium following the McFarland turbidity scale. The result of the experiments was that the group by immersion of essential oils showed the best result in the absence of bacterial growth, followed by chlorhexidine and then hydrogen peroxide. The group by spraying both substances was the one that proved to be the most flawed, with a high rate of bacterial growth. Thus, essential oils were the most effective substance, however, none of the methods proved to be totally efficient in combating Streptococcus mitis.