Introduction: The toothbrush is the most widely used tooth-hygiene tool. Numerous designs of toothbrush have been emerged and manufacturers claim superiority of their products in plaque removal. This study aimed to compare the efficacy of a tooth wipe to a manual toothbrush on reduction of microbial plaque.Materials and Methods: This cross-over study was conducted on 30 dental students at two visits with one-week interval. Before each visit, individuals refrained from brushing teeth for 12 hours, had their regular meal, and then avoided to eat hard and/or soft foodstuff. All subjects were asked to brush their teeth with the allocated toothbrush (without toothpaste) using the Bass technique for 2 minutes at the first visit and with the alternate toothbrush at second visit. Pre- and post-brushing plaque was measured for total, proximal and buccolingual surfaces using the O’Leary Plaque Index. One examiner blinded to the allocated toothbrushes made all clinical measurements. Data were statistically analyzed using SPSS software. Paired t-test was used to detect differences between finger tooth wipe and manual toothbrush. Results: The overall plaque indexes were significantly reduced from 39.37±20.76 to 20.62±13.42 using the finger brush, and from 35.82±16.82 to 19.70±11.15 using the manual brush (P=0.000). There were no significant differences between finger brush and manual brush for removing plaque at total surfaces (46.01±17.2% vs. 47.73±17.04%, p=0.75) and proximal surfaces (28.76±23.15% vs. 43.71±23.77%, p=0.06). However, the plaque reduction at buccolingual surfaces by finger brush was significantly higher than that by manual brush (79.37±23.54% vs. 56.83±22.33%, p=0.001). Conclusion: This study indicates that the finger toothbrush is as effective as the manual toothbrush in reduction of microbial plaque. It is recommended to use finger toothbrush for oral hygiene whenever it is impossible to brush teeth by a manual toothbrush.
