Introduction: This article discusses about the design and development of a tooth tool that cures common dental ailments. This tooth tool highly simplifies the maintenance and care of teeth so that taking care of teeth becomes easy and resulting in better and bright tooth. Due to better maintenance, teeth do not fall easy prey to ailments. It is very simple to use. One explanation and/or demonstration is enough using the tool properly. Unlike other existing dental tools those work on point to point cleaning, this tool works on wide teeth surface cleaning. Thus, this tooth tool is more effective and efficient. Furthermore, one can alone use it unaided.
Literature: Many of the tooth ailments are related to the dental deposits. The root cause of dental ailments is adherence of food film or debris that converted to plaques, tartar, and calculus etc and may ultimately lead to the dental decay and cavity formation. Williams (1) was credited with the slogan that, “a clean tooth does not decay”. Meckel (2) showed that teeth scraping contains unstructured layer of organic film. Tooth picks up biofilms regularly while eating and then the film subsequently act hosting bacteria etc. The biofilms become a dental deleterious bacterial colony and causes tooth to decay. The colony spreads by shearing off and hinging it to other location and spreads tooth disease. Hence, our aim in this work is to keep teeth neat and clean using tooth tool so as to refrain teeth from catching ailments.
Design: This innovative tooth tool effectively, efficiently and positively cleans the food adherence from teeth. The design concepts is that the tool should be: simple and effective; equal or more hard than teeth to scrap adhered film effectively (low pressure film transfer); sturdy enough to positively remove the already formed hard deposits (calculus etc) and soft masses; accesses nooks & corners of teeth and junctions; and lastly should not have any cutting surfaces. From a designed composition of steel, wire was spun to round shape and round conformation was given to make a loop like tooth brush (Fig 1).
Manufacture: The steel wire was produced, drawn and annealed to attain a highly smooth surface with a dia of 0.3 mm. About 72 strands were taken for making a tight flat braid of 10 mm wide. The braid was then shaped to a 10 mm dia loop. This loop wire head was mounted on a stick (handle) for easy operability.
Use: The tooth tool is used like a tooth stick to scrub and brush dental and gum junctions respectively. Primarily, the tool surface should touch and rub teeth surfaces for effective cleaning. The tool head pulls along food films and deposits cohesively. Pulling of dirt and debris is gentle and soft and no way hurts tooth or gum. The tool is rigid that exerts soft action for cleaning; on the other hand regular toothbrush is a soft tool that exerts hard action (due to its cutting edge). Tooth tool cleanse teeth better than regular toothbrush. Figure 2 compares a result showing the differences between regular brushing and that of tooth tool after 30 day use. The tooth tool cleaned teeth set are brighter than the regular toothbrush one.
Current Status: Currently this tool is under evaluation for daily use. People use this tool just after regular tooth brushing to get rid of dental pain and aches. Results are quite encouraging. A young pharmacist has his tooth trouble subdued by the use & a man in late 60s is beneficiary of thermal sensitivity of tooth. In another case, the patient is recovering from severe gingivitis. There are about 50 pieces of tool under use reporting good results.
It seems that innovative tooth tool posses huge potential in treating common dental ailments. It also helps maintaining and grooming teeth. We are looking forward to use it as a paste less toothbrush in future so that the chemical complications arise of tooth paste are put to rest.
