Is it true that the dental thread helps to prevent caries and gum disease?

Use dental thread when brushing your teeth recommend dental associations USA, Great Britain And Canada. Find Similar adviсe You can sites many dental clinics. Write O Benefits dental thread and Manufacturers goods for oral hygiene.

The tooth has five surfaces, but we can effectively brush only three of them: the rear, front and chewing. In the inaccessible areas, raid, which can lead to interdental caries - the most dangerous, since it is not visible to the naked eye and it affects two neighboring teeth at once. That is why it was necessary to come up with something that could be cleansed of the surface inaccessible brushes. And in 1815 an American dentist Levy Pahl Parm He suggested using a silk tooth thread for this. Since then, the material of the thread has changed many times, but this tool has firmly entered recommendations medical organizations different countries. Dentists of the whole world recommend using dental threads to their patients to prevent the development of caries, inflammation of the gums (gingivitis) and other diseases of the oral cavity.

So it was until in 2017 the journalists of the Associated Press did not conduct investigation And they did not find out that in fact the benefits of the dental thread by science, strictly speaking, were not proven. Of course, the thread and really mechanically helps to remove the raid, but does it prevent dental diseases and gums? Having studied several dozens of existing medical research, journalists came to the conclusion that they are all not reliable enough, outdated or “very low quality”. They sent a request to the US Department of Health, where they were replied that the effectiveness of using this oral hygiene was really never studied.

However, some studies of the benefits of the dental thread were still carried out. So, for example, scientists found outthat the risk of developing caries of milk teeth in children decreased by 40%if, on weekdays at school, the dentist spent them with hygiene with a dental thread. At the same time, similar studies, where adolescents did it on their own, did not reveal any decrease.

Researchers of the authoritative Medical Kokrain Library tried Summarize All well -known scientific works on the effect of dental thread (and other hygiene products: interdental brush, wooden and rubber toothpicks, irrigators) for the health of the oral cavity. Dental threads really reduced the likelihood of development Gingivita About 8%, but inferior in this brush and irrigators. At the same time, all studies were brief and medium-term, and this time is not enough to identify the relationship between hygiene methods and the development of caries. In addition, the scientists of the Kokrain library argue that the reliability of evidence in these works is from low to very low and, perhaps, they do not have a clinical significance at all.

The main problem of the scientific substantiation of the effectiveness of the dental thread is in the short duration of the studies. The longest period of observation of subjects - Nine months, which is clearly not enough to identify any laws related to caries. Therefore, scientists, in fact, did not even set such a goal. As a result, there are practically no studies on the effectiveness of the dental thread in the fight against caries.

In this case, the improper use of the dental thread can even harm gums, especially automatic devices for brushing your teeth with thread. Therefore, before the first use of this hygiene product, it is recommended to contact a dentist who will show how to use the thread.

Despite the recommendations, not even all dentists use the thread. So, for example, surveySpended in India in 2014, revealed that 15% of 255 respondents-doctors do not use this means of oral hygiene and only 64% recommended tooth thread to their patients. However, the authors of the study believe that the problem here is not the uselessness of the thread, but in the low level of awareness and poor university training of doctors.

Thus, now there is no sufficient number of authoritative studies that would confirm that the use of dental thread prevents the formation of caries. On the other hand, there are no studies that would refute it. In the scientific community there is an information vacuum on this issue, and this is explainable: to conduct a full -fledged long -term study with control groups, by estimates Experts, you need at least $ 10 million. And the benefits of a dental thread are far from the most acute medical issue that independent organizations spend such money on its clarification. It would be possible to observe people and interview them in ordinary medical practice, but 27% of adult patients Lie To their doctors that they regularly use the thread, so that such a study would also not be representative. Experience could pay for companies - manufacturers of dental threads, but then their results would be compromised by a conflict of interests.

Nevertheless, dentists continue to recommend using a tooth thread or its analogues (for example, denture brush) daily, since it is cheap and simple. And if there is even a scientifically not proven probability that these means of oral hygiene really reduce the likelihood of caries, there is no reason not to use them.