Viel Vera D. Casilla | Myline Grace A. Centeno | Marinel P. Cuison
Leira Mae G. Espanto | Lennie Beth K. Saldaen | Grace A. Salinas
Annie Grace U. Urolaza | Justin B. Yagyagen
School of Dentistry
Dr. Maria Lourdes E. Cantor Adviser
ABSTRACT
This study introduces powdered milkfish bone to the dental field as an alternative dentifrice. Milkfish, Chanos chanos is an important food fish in Southeast Asia and is the sole living species in the family Chanidae. Fish bone is a useful inexpensive ceramic material to develop phase pure hydroxyapatite crystals. The powdered milkfish bone was compared alongside the commercially sold dental oral pumice upon clinical application. The study was conducted to ascertain the effectiveness of the powdered milkfish bone in removing dental plaque. The study was conducted among 10 volunteers with a certain criteria. The effectiveness was judged using the O’Leary Plaque Scoring Method measured before and after the application of both the commercially-sold oral pumice and powdered milkfish bone. The aim of this study is to compare the effectiveness of powdered milkfish bone with the commercially-sold oral pumice in removing plaque. In the t-test, the computed value of -1.16 is less than the critical value of 2.101 at 0.05 level of significance. This fails to reject the null hypothesis. Therefore, there is no significant difference between the effectiveness in the removal of plaque of the commercially-sold oral pumice and the powdered milkfish bone. However, the results show that powdered milkfish bone is an effective alternative to commercially sold oral pumice.
Key words: Alternative oral pumice, milkfish bone, plaque score, plaque removal,
effectiveness
