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Dental Tribune Middle East & Africa Edition No. 5, 2015

hygiene tribuneDental Tribune Middle East & Africa Edition | September-October 2015 1B > Page 4B > Page 2B iTOP - Harp instead of rock guitar By Rolf Kufus, Switzerland I n prophylaxis, the individu- al approach is as important as the training aspect. iTOP, which is Curaprox prophylaxis training, therefore considers “prevention” to be more than just using fluoride toothpaste. When Rolf Kufus, a Zurich dentist, talks about prevention, he emphasizes the demands that prevention makes on den- tists and patients alike. He compares it to music: “In most cases, prophylaxis means that the guitarist in a heavy metal band suddenly has to learn to play the harp. This is not something you learn overnight - and especially not without a teacher. Rock music is - at most - for your ears, what teeth need is the gentle sound of a harp: dentist Rolf Kufus and iTOP instructor Catherine Schubert. Oral health is a pleasure Just like a delicate ripple on the 47 strings of a harp –iTOP teeth cleaning means saying goodbye to the coarse scrub- bing by a rock guitarist with his few chords. Right through from clean- ing interdental spaces to the proper use of the single tuft and the efficient method with a soft, densely-bristled tooth- brush based on the modified Bass method: iTOP is a three- step tutorial for beginners and advanced learners, for den- tal professionals. With tooth- brush, single tuft brush, inter- dental brushes and dental floss in hand, participants learn Innovating Oral Care By Hansjoerg Reick, USA A s Hansjoerg Reick de- scribes his career and involvement in Oral-B and Procter and Gamble’s Pro- fessional Care Technology, his enthusiasm and interest are obvious. When asked what he considers his greatest person- al achievement since joining Oral-B in 1996, he will tell you that it has been helping people achieve better oral health. ‘Oral care has been an area of growth and great innovation, an exciting business to be in and a great opportunity to cre- ate better products,’ Hansjoerg recalled. With research and develop- ment facilities throughout the world, all Procter and Gamble’s innovative oral care products are developed by global teams in multiple technical centres and with experts from different disciplines. This involves working in close collaboration and partnership with all stakeholders – den- tal practitioners, universities, product research and develop- ment, marketing, clinical and consumer research, engineer- ing and quality assurance. Hansjoerg and his team ‘tap into the expertise and under- standing of all technical cen- tres worldwide, bringing to- gether all of the innovators in research, development, clinical and consumer testing. In this way,’ he added, ‘we can create truly global and superior prod- ucts.’ Big stride forward In his opinion, the most in- novative toothbrush develop- ment has been the creation of a small, round brush head with an oscillating-rotating mo- tion. The basic innovation for this product happened shortly before Hansjoerg joined the company. ‘This was revolution- ary and a completely different cleaning approach, everything else at the time was either a manual or power brush that mimicked manual brushing motions,’ he said. When asked how the research and development team had come up with the idea, Hans- joerg will tell you that it was a dentist-inspired solution. The research team developed the oscillating-rotating power brush by analysing the most ef- fective cleaning mechanisms available in the dental industry and elsewhere – how brushes and bristles worked, and in what directions the bristles went depending on the motion of the brush. ‘What the team discovered was that a rotational side-to-side brush movement was neces- sary for the bristles to reach all areas of the teeth from all angles, especially in hard-to- reach areas. This novel design was tested extensively in the laboratory, in clinical trials and by dentists in practice before it was introduced. ‘It has been independently re- viewed and determined to be superior to manual brushes – especially in the critical lingual and interproximal areas, and other areas with difficult ac- cess. This design provides the best cleaning efficiency by sur- rounding and adapting to the morphology of the teeth,’ Hans- joerg said. ‘It offers a superior clean expe- rience and benefit for users. In fact, a 2005 Cochrane collabo- ration study found that only os- cillation-rotation brushes were consistently superior to manual brushes for plaque and gingivi- tis reductions. ‘In a more recent systematic review in 2011, significantly greater plaque and gingivitis reductions were again found only with oscillation-rotation brushes compared to manual brushes, confirming these earlier findings. After I joined Oral-B, we built on this innova- tion by adding pulsations to the oscillating-rotating technology to create the 3D Professional What makes a great tootbrush? Oscillation-rotation brushes are superior to manual brushes in reducing plaque and gin- givitis

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