Abstract

Dentine hypersensitivity is defined as pain arising from exposed dentine, typically in response to an external stimulus, which cannot be explained by any other dental disease. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of three different interventions in reducing the symptoms of dentinal hypersensitivity over a 6-month period. The study design was a single-blind, parallel group, randomized controlled trial carried out in general dental practice by a single investigator. In total, 75 adult patients were recruited from the same general dental practice to participate, with only 3 patients not completing the trial. In total 72% of the participants were female. All participants self-reported that they had at least one sensitive tooth. The participants were randomly allocated to one of three treatment arms: non-desensitizing (regular) toothpaste; desensitizing toothpaste; and professionally applied dentine-bonding agent (with regular toothpaste provided for home use). It is not clear whether there was only a single application of the dentine-bonding agent. All patients recorded the severity of their sensitivity symptoms at baseline, 2 weeks, 3 months and 6 months using a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). The key finding was that mean VAS scores for sensitivity were statistically significantly reduced in the densensitizing toothpaste and the dentine-bonding agent group (p<0.001) across all time points. Further statistical analysis demonstrated that the scores for the dentine-bonding agent were significantly lower than for both regular toothpaste (p<0.001) and densensitizing toothpaste (p<0.001), suggesting it as the intervention that resulted in the greatest improvement in sensitivity symptoms. Additionally, the mean scores for desensitizing toothpaste were significantly lower than for non-desensitizing toothpaste (p<0.05).