Meeting abstract
The Effect of Chewing Gum in the Prevention of Caries
Bernard Janković
Ivana Ciglar
Alena Knežević
Ivana Miletić
H. Bračić
Abstract
Dental caries, because of its spread worldwide, represents a public health problem. It is therefore, not surprising to find a great number of materials and procedures whose goal is the prevention of its formation. One such procedure is use of chewing gums which stimulate the secretion of saliva, thus preventing the formation of dental bacterial plaque on the surface of the teeth as well as a removal of existing plaque. The study included 16 students (12 female and 4 male) of the 3rd, 4th and 5th year of the Dental School of the Zagreb Universitiy. The goal was to measure the quantity of secretion of unstimulated saliva as opposed to that of stimulated saliva for each student, using the wax sticks borrowed from the Caries risk test set (Schaan, Vivadent) and two kinds of Orbit chewing gum (Wrigley: Winterfresh and Wild Strawberry). The examinees first chewed the wax and the chewing gum for one minute and then swallowed all the secreted saliva. Afterwards they chewed for another three minutes, this time collecting the secreted saliva into a calibrated measuring cup. The achived results are expressed as the medium value and standard deviation, the difference between them being noted with Student t-test. KEP index (DMF/t) for each examinee was also calculated. The achived results showed a significant difference in the saliva secretion during the use of chewing gum and the use of wax. There was also a difference in the secretion of saliva regarding the flavour of the chewing gum. The volume of saliva was more when Wild Strawberry was used. The results of the study justify the use of chewing gums, especially if we take into consideration that many of them contain an artificial sweetner, such as xylithol, with a strong anticaries effect.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
3277
URI
Publication date:
15.9.2003.
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