Daily Repeatability of Post-Brushing Disclosed Plaque Measurement

Objective: This research evaluated after-brushing disclosed plaque measurement reproducibility. Methods: After training, a plaque examiner assessed plaque levels from 50 healthy dentate adults over a two-day period. On Day 1, subjects presented with overnight plaque, and then brushed for 30-seconds using a regular anticavity dentifrice and manual brush. Whole mouth disclosed plaque was assessed using a 6-point categorical scale (MQH), the Turesky modification of the Quigley Hein index. This process was repeated on Day 2. Intra-class correlations (ICC) and 95% lower confidence bounds (LCB) were calculated using a 0-to-1 scale, where 0 represented no agreement and 1 represented perfect agreement. Results: All 50 subjects attended both visits, and all data were included in the analysis. Age ranged from 18-71 years, with females comprising the majority (68%) of study subjects. There was considerable variation in postbrush MQH plaque. Day 1 scores ranged from 1.0-3.94, while Day 2 ranged from 0.64-3.50. MQH means (SD) were 2.19 (0.59) and 2.03 (0.70) at Day 1 and Day 2, respectively. Postbrush MQH scores were well correlated (0.791) across visits (p<0.0001). The ICC was 0.761, with a 95% LCB of 0.631. Conclusion: Use of a standard whole mouth plaque index yielded highly reproducible 30-second post-brushing disclosed plaque scores.