Efectividad de los tratamientos para el control de la placa dental. Revisión Sistemática

Abstract

Introduction: Dental plaque is a biofilm of multiple species of microorganisms, that grows on the hard and soft tissues of the oral cavity. Its removal is necessary to maintain an appropriate oral health. Many studies on the effect of different therapies on dental plaque. However, to date there is no evidence of a systematic review that collects physical-mechanical and chemical treatments for dental plaque. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to determine the effectiveness of treatments for the control of dental plaque. Methods: Some health databases were used: Medline via Pubmed, multidisciplinary databases: Artemis, via Elsevier ScienceDirect, Springer; electronic libraries: Scielo, Redalyc, Virtual Health Library (VHL) coordinated by BIREME, via Cochrane and Cochrane VHL; Open Access publishing: Biomed Central, and Hindawi; Directory of Magazines: Dialnet, DOAJ; Institutional Repository: academic search engines like Google Scholar, with articles in Spanish / English, from 2005 to 2016, individuals without distinction of age or sex, limited to a total of 60 relevant articles; 14 systematic reviews, 40 clinical trials, 3 case-control studies, 2 in vitro and 1 Invivo study. Results: Most of the physical-mechanical and chemical treatments applied were effective for the control of dental plaque, highlighting within the physical-mechanical the toothbrushes as the primary tool and chemical treatments are mostly developed to empower and help the previous ones. Conclusions: Based on the results, it is suggested that the use of the toothbrush as the main method for removing dental plaque, using mouthwash as a complement.