Abstract

One of the best way to prevent dental caries and periodontal disease is removing dental plaque. Toothbrushing is also one of the crucial ways to gel rid of dental plaque and improve dental hygiene. The purpose of th is study was to examine how many bacteria were attached to toothbrushes used by dental palque acidogenecity and related behaviors to toothbrush use. Subjects in this study were 30 college students in their twenties, on whom a survey was conducted to find out how they cleansed their toothbrushes, how long they cleaned toothbrushes after brushing, and how to keep them. And then dental palque acidogenecity by caries activity test was implemented and the number of bacteria attached to their toothbrushes was tested. The findings of the study were as follows : 1. Concerning correlations between dental palque acidogenecity and the number of remaining bacteria in the toothbrushes used by students, the number of bacteria was lower in the group of students with no caries activity than in the group with mild caries activity. 2. As for relations between the way of cleansing toothbrushes and the number of bacteria, there was no statistically significant gap between the group of students who wetted their toothbrushes with water and rubbed the heads of them and the group of students who just only wetted their toothbrushes with no further actions. 3. Regarding the relationship of toothbrush cleansing time to the number of bacteria, the number of bacteria was lower in the group of students who cleansed their toothbrushes for 15 seconds or more. 4. As to the influence of the number of toothbrush used by students, there was no significant difference between the group using just one toothbrush and the other group using two or more toothbrushes. 5. As for correlations between the way of keeping toothbrushes and the number of bacteria, no significant gap existed between the group thai kept their toothbrushes separately and the other that didn't.

Keywords

• behavior;
• caries activity test;
• contamination;
• dental plaque acidogenicity;
• number of bacteria;
• toothbrush

• 세균수;
• 오염;
• 우식활성검사;
• 치면세균막 산생성도;
• 칫솔;
• 행동;