European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Objective: The state of one's mouth and dentition has a huge effect on one's life. As a result, everyone should strive for a safe mouth with a full complement of teeth. Toothbrush and toothpaste are the most regularly used oral hygiene tools. Apart from these two, people utilize other oral hygiene products either knowingly or on the recommendation of a dentist. while tooth powders are also used as a regular cleaning agent in some parts of the world, owing to their low cost. Literature on this subject is practically non-existent. As a result, it was deemed necessary to investigate the effectiveness of tooth powders in comparison to toothpastes as an oral hygiene regimen.
Materials and Methods:  A descriptive cross sectional survey was conducted through a self administered questionnaire. The data was gathered, summarized in excel sheets, and analysed with SPSS software. The Chi square test was performed to examine the age of the participants as well as their preference for toothpaste or tooth powder in the general population of South India with statistical significance of P< 0.05.
Results and Discussion: Toothpaste was the most preferred and commonly used cleaning aid when evaluated among all the age groups. The correlation showed a p value of <0.05 which was statistically significant.
Conclusion: From this study it is concluded that the general population of south India prefer toothpaste over tooth powder and they are also aware of the pros and cons of both toothpaste and tooth powder