The World Health Organization has identified oral disease as a key health problem.^1, 2 Patients can avoid developing diseases such as caries and periodontitis by adopting a healthy lifestyle and implementing an effective personal oral hygiene routine to remove plaque.^3, 4 Undergoing professional prophylaxis is also of great importance. Methods, instruments and materials used for this purpose should therefore be state of the art.⁵

Method comparison

EMS’s GBT is a systematic, comprehensively documented clinical protocol developed in collaboration with researchers and practitioners. Its aim is to clean all oral surfaces as thoroughly as possible using a minimally invasive method.⁶ In GBT, after disclosing of plaque, the biofilm is gently removed with the AIRFLOW handpiece.⁷ Only then is the painless piezoceramic ultrasonic instrument PIEZON PS NO PAIN used for removal of calculus. In contrast, conventional professional prophylaxis procedures focus on removing calculus with invasive sonic or hand instruments. The subsequent polishing unnecessarily removes enamel.⁸ In addition, in order to save time, disclosing of plaque is often neglected. As a result, significantly more biofilm remains compared with GBT, for which a standardised disclosing agent is used.^9, 10

Questionnaires and results

Prevention-oriented practices that systematically apply the recommended GBT protocol administered the questionnaires and provided the anonymised responses to EMS. The questionnaires contained eight questions, covering overall assessment of GBT, surface smoothness achieved, usefulness of disclosing plaque prior to treatment and direct comparison with the conventional prophylaxis method, among others.

Discussion and conclusion

The survey finding that around 92% of patients preferred the GBT systematic prophylaxis protocol compared with the conventional approach is consistent with that of previously published studies.^5, 11 Based on the risks and needs of the individual patient, GBT is suitable for both primary prophylaxis and secondary prophylaxis for periodontitis and peri-implantitis therapy. Owing to its particular practical benefit, in combination with the comprehensive scientific documentation supporting GBT, it is recommended by numerous prominent experts from practice and academia.^7, 12–15 The high level of patient satisfaction found by the survey leads to a very good recall rate in daily practice, and the protocol is efficient to apply. Therefore, using GBT for prophylaxis is financially advantageous for practices.

Discover more about GBT and register now on the new GBT micro-learning platform: gbt-dental.com/bite-sized-learning.

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