If you're like me, there will be a few areas of your mouth that you can still find really hard to get to, even if you are using an electric toothbrush twice a day and something in between your teeth daily. Just that weird little area that doesn't quite play the game. This is something my patients struggle and ask me about every single day and most of my patients now have one of these little beauties below in their routine. They take a little more effort yes (don't hate me) but they will definitely save you time in the dental chair in the long run.

The single tufted brush

2. The Universal Care brush - previously Implant Care brush

3. The Curaprox 708 Implant/Ortho brush

4. The interspace brush

Some electric brushes like Oral B or Curaprox Hydrosonic Brush now have an attachment which will do a similar job these manual versions

I have added links on each of these pictures in case you would like to buy any of these brushes/toothbrush heads to try at home. This isn’t a sponsored post or advertisement and am no way affiliated with any of these brands, I just think they’re good at what they do and my patients get great results when using them.

But what should we be using these little treasures for?

Crowding

Unless you have had your teeth professionally realigned, have a fixed retainer and a removable reatiner that you wear religiously every night, nine times out of ten you will have some crowding. Usually this isn't such a big deal but sometimes, this can turn into a real problem. Unless you're thinking of realigning your teeth we need to incorporate something into your routine to make sure these areas don't get left out. As you can see in the picture to the right, your toothbrush just wont get there. A single tufted brush can help you get to all those nooks and crannies that crowding creates to help you keep all these areas as plaque free as possible

Partially Erupted Teeth

Teeth that just haven't quite made their way through yet (and some of them just never will). I suffer from TWO partially erupted wisdom teeth, which can cause me a lot of drama. Pericorinitus, to give this wee problem its proper name, effects hundreds of my patients and can be a real pain, literally. Wisdom teeth will either

a)come straight up with no problems

b)come up tongue side first and then usually cheek side - minimal amount of problems

c)cheek side first and then usually just hang out here never properly coming through and causing a world of problems

Most of these problems occur due to the area not being cleaned properly and food trapping around the gum as the tooth is not completely exposed. Sometimes there is piece of gum sitting over the tooth called an operculum (fancy) and underneath this operculum is basically studio 54 for bacteria. You can remove it, but it will grow back - just to add insult to injury. The bacteria in plaque makes this area swell up, which creates more room for even more bacteria and food to join the party which can cause infection. Excellent.

Now on a serious note, when these guys flare up and become infected it can be serious sometimes requiring antibiotics as prescribed by your Dentist. So watch out for

swelling around the tooth or of your face generally
difficulty swallowing & eating
if you have a temperature
limited opening of your mouth

If you're experiencing any of these symptoms, you should be going to see your Dentist or out of hours dental surgery right away, that day, no waiting around. In dentistry we follow NICE guidelines which suggest if this problem recurs 5 times the tooth should be extracted although this isn't always a suitable option.

But keeping up with your oral hygiene at home should stop the tooth getting to this point and a single tufted brush will help you do just that by having something smaller than your regular toothbrush to clean this area properly. Probably should be doing this everyday, but completely worth it especially because infected wisdom teeth can also cause bad breath - just saying.

Brackets

These clever little squares are vital for the success of your treatment, keeping them clean however can sometimes make you want to gouge your eyes out (this is of course a metaphor I don’t expect any of my readers - hi - to take this as an instruction but please resist the urge to). Plaque magnets at their finest, these areas can often be missed by even the best electric toothbrush - unless your electric toothbrush cleverly has a single tufted brush head as we have talked about above - can miss these areas, no bother though to the single tufted brush and my patients who add this to their routine ideally once a day have much better plaque control. Remember if left for long enough plaque causes cavities so the last thing we won’t after sometimes 2+ years of braces is to start doing fillings.

disclosing tablets can also really help highlight were you’re missing, not just for kids

Retainers

Fixed Retainers, like brackets, benefit from an extra bit of TLC from a single tufted brush again because they are plaque and tartar magnets. Harder to see and clean around because they are fixed to the back of the teeth so anything extra that you add into the routine, superfloss/xfloss(lite), waterflosser, interdental brushes or a single tufted brush (or all of the above) is usually really beneficial here.

Stand alone tooth/cleaning either side of a space

Not a day goes by when I don’t feel sorry for these guys*, more often than not forgotten, hanging around, usually at the back of the mouth covered in plaque. In the opposite format to ‘catchphrase’ dentistry is usually the opposite to ‘clean what you see’ and most of the time patients do just that, leaving these teeth that are hidden on their own out. These teeth are usually hugely important either helping support a denture or the only tooth that’s helping you chew food so we need it to be as healthy as possible. Now in a lot of these cases we are still depending on you remembering these teeth (run your tongue over your teeth before you start so you don’t leave anybody out*) but a single tufted brush can help you be a bit more accurate here and can help you clean the whole way around the tooth if there isn’t a gap that you can clear with floss or an interdental brush. Similarly you can use a single tufted brush to clean down the sides of the teeth either side of a missing tooth

*I am aware teeth are not people (I think)

Dental Implants

The next best thing to your natural tooth, there is sometimes an impression that you get your tooth/teeth taken out and that’s it no more brushing, in the words of the late, great George Michael Freedom! It is actually completely the OPPOSITE to this and although most of my patients are starting to get this we need to factor in a few extra things into your routine to give this implant(s) as much TLC as possible. For most of my implant patients I am recommending a single tufted brush or a universal care brush for a few reasons.

Natural teeth are more bulbous, implants are more tulip shaped

No we haven’t entered the gardening section, sometimes implants don’t sit flush with natural teeth, so this small gap (sometimes only a millimetre) can be missed causing plaque to build up around the gum line of your implant. As an implant patient this should be your worst nightmare, ok maybe not BUT plaque sitting here, especially plaque sitting here for a while is not good and can ultimately lead to the implant failure. Why spend all that time and let’s face it money on your implant to not clean it properly and have that implant fail? I usually recommend a single tufted brush to get around the gum line of implants at the front of your mouth and a Tepe Universal Care brush/Curaprox 708 brush to get to the gum line of implants at the back because of the shape of the handle but this really is up to you and your personal choice about what you like, or what you have to hand. Put it this way, it won’t do them any harm (unless you do it really aggressively or every hour on the hour, please be sensible, once a day is fine).

2. Often, implants can sit higher up, lower down, tilted more inwards than your natural teeth can or do.

Life is not perfect and there are a lot of things to consider when placing an implant, high smile lines, how a patient talks, type and thickness of bone that is available to put the implant in and quite frankly your safety. For this reason we don’t always have a perfect line of little teeth soldiers waiting to be cleaned so using a single tufted brush to clean these areas like you would recession (and indeed recession can happen around your implants too) will help keep these areas plaque free if you’re missing them with your normal tooth brushing technique.

Recession

Ahhhh the bane of a lot of our lives. Happens to the best of us and as most of my patients have had some form of gum treatment or are guilty of a bit of overbrushing, the most of us.

Recession happens over time usually and makes the tooth appear as if it’s getting longer. Even though the tooth looks longer, we still brush as if it was the same length it was at the beginning. So as this tooth has been stealthily appearing to get longer, more and more of it is being missed when we are brushing. This is a pain because plaque at the Gum line can actually make the tooth recede more and in some cases can cause a big juicy cavity to appear. Nice. So keeping these areas clear is essential either with more mindful brushing or with the help of a single tufted brush to help you be more accurate. I also recommend that my patients pull their lip up and down so they can see exactly where there tooth starts and stops before they brush, and who cares how silly this looks I know (most of) you aren’t brushing with an audience.

Furcations

I’ll not lie to you, is a bit of a dental disaster. This can happen to teeth with two or more roots like premolars and molars usually as a result of Gum Disease in these areas. The reason this happens is that we have started to loose the bone that sits in between the roots of the tooth leaving a space for bacteria and food. Yay. These guys are a b*tch to clean and for this reason once this happens the overall prognosis for the tooth isn’t great BUT we can hold on to the tooth for as long as possible if we keep the furcated area as beautifully demonstrated in this picture from periobasics.com as clean as possible with a single tufted/interspace brush or a waterflosser or an interdental brush or a combination of these.

In fact, interspace brushes are just great for everything,

So there you go, a bit of an overview of how to help with those tricky or more complicated areas when cleaning your teeth. Most of these brushes should be available if you come to visit me in practice at Moira Cosmetic Dental or Bupa Dental Care Glengormley or you can get them online via the links in the pictures above. Just remember to change them every 3 months and if you’re unsure of how to use check out the videos above or ask at your next dental hygiene or dental appointment.

Thanks for reading & happy brushing!