The effect of viewing digital images of the severe consequences of poor oral hygiene on patients' adherence to good oral hygiene practice

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Background: Poor adherence to tooth brushing and flossing will lead to the accumulation of plaque and bacterial biofilm, resulting in gingival inflammation and dental demineralization. Besides, if kept untreated, poor oral hygiene will cause periodontal destruction, which perhaps progresses to dentition loss. Thus, effective oral hygiene (OH) instructions are essential for the prevention and maintenance of oral health. Rationale: Previous OH strategies range between traditional verbal instructions to videotaped instructions, which showed similar effectiveness. Other recent strategy involves showing the patients the severe consequences of plaque and bacterial biofilm accumulation on oral health which showed promising results. Thus, an interesting question arises: Are the mere OH instructions delivered verbally or digitally enough, or should the poor OH consequences be highlighted? Study objectives: To compare the differences in the adherence of optimum oral hygiene during video OH instructions with or without images displaying the consequences of poor OH. We hypothesized that the inclusion of digital images displaying poor OH's consequences would show no differences in patients’ oral hygiene adherence. Methods: Forty-eight healthy participants will come during two visits and will be divided equally into two groups. Group 1 consists of 24 participants which they will be exposed to video OH instructions. Group 2 also consists of 24 healthy participants and will be exposed to video OH instructions but with images displaying the consequences of poor OH's. Routine participants’ demographic data along with patient’s plaque score, gingival bleeding index, and gingival bleeding on probing will be collected.