Methods: After obtaining IRB ethical approval, subjects who had at least one tooth with sound exposed dentine on cervical buccal surface with hypersensitivity were recruited from the students and staff of The University of Hong Kong. After receiving scaling at baseline, subjects were randomly assigned to the in-office treatment or home-use toothpaste group. Clinical assessments of dentine hypersensitivity to both tactile and thermal stimuli were performed prior to the treatment at baseline and week 4 by a blinded examiner. The responses of the subjects to both stimuli were recorded using a VAS scale (0 – 10).
Results: Among the 55 subjects recruited at baseline, 5 did not attend the week 4 assessment. Mean age of the remaining 50 subjects (25 in each group) was 46.2 years and 32 (64%) were female. There were no statistically significant differences regarding the background characteristics and the responses to both hypersensitivity assessments between the two groups at baseline (p>0.05). Reponses to both hypersensitivity assessments in the in-office treatment group showed no statistically significant difference between baseline and week 4 (tactile: 1.8 vs. 1.9; cold: 5.5 vs. 5.6, all p>0.05) while there was improvement in responses to both assessments in the toothpaste group between baseline and week 4 (tactile: 2.4 vs. 1.4; cold: 5.8 vs. 4.8; all p<0.05). The change in tactile hypersensitivity assessment results between the two groups was statistically significantly different (in-office: 0.1 vs. home-use: -1.0, p<0.05) but not for the thermal assessment (p>0.05).
Conclusions: Daily use of the study desensitizing toothpaste is able to reduce dentine hypersensitivity up to 4 weeks but not with a single in-office application of the desensitizing prophylaxis paste.