Study design: Randomised, controlled, single-blind, three-arm parallel-group trial set in general dental practice with a single general dental practitioner operator/assessor.
Intervention: Seventy-five adult patients, with basic periodontal examination scores of 0 in all sextants, good oral hygiene, at least one sensitive tooth (not diagnosed as pulpitis) and willing to comply with the trial regime were entered into the trial and randomised. Seventy-two participants completed the study. The three interventions were; non-desensitising toothpaste (Colgate Cavity Protection Regular, Colgate-Palmolive, USA), desensitising toothpaste (Colgate Sensitive Fresh Stripe, Colgate-Palmolive, USA) and dentine bonding agent (Seal and Protect, Denpsly, USA). The non-desensitising toothpaste and desensitising toothpastes were provided to the subjects for use at home but dentine bonding agent was applied in the surgery.
Outcome measure: Dentinal hypersensitivity was measured using a participant completed Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) at baseline, two weeks, three months and six months. At baseline and six months a standardised air blast to the buccal cervical root stimulus was used with the VAS. At two weeks and at three months participants self-completed the VAS at home with no stimulus.
Results: Although there was a reduction in dentinal hypersensitivity over time for all three groups, dentinal hypersensitivity reduced significantly (p<0.0001) in both desensitising toothpaste and dentine bonding agent groups. The mean VAS scores in the dentine bonding agent group were statistically significantly lower when compared to both non-desensitising toothpaste (p<0.001) and desensitising toothpaste (p<0.001). In addition, mean scores for non-desensitising toothpaste were higher than desensitising toothpaste (p<0.05).
Conclusions: Dentine bonding agents provided the greatest improvement in dentinal hypersensitivity at two weeks and six months. This reduction was greater than that achieved with the desensitising and non-desensitising toothpastes tested.