Differential Efficacy of Two Dental Implant Decontamination Techniques in Reducing Microbial Biofilm and Re-Growth onto Titanium Disks In Vitro

• Main Authors: Aida Meto, Enrico Conserva, Francesco Liccardi, Bruna Colombari, Ugo Consolo, Elisabetta Blasi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-08-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: Brush; BIC-40; BLI-<i>P. aeruginosa</i>; dental implants; decontamination systems; titanium disks
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/9/15/3191

Dental implants are crucial therapeutic devices for successful substitution of missing teeth. Failure cases are mainly pathogen-associated events, allowing clinical progression toward peri-mucositis or peri-implantitis. The aim of this study was to compare the performance of two mechanical decontamination systems, Nickel-Titanium brush (Brush) and Air-Polishing system with 40 µm bicarbonate powder (BIC-40), by means of a novel bioluminescence-based model that measures microbial load in real time. Briefly, 30 disks were contaminated using the bioluminescent <i>Pseudomonas aeruginosa</i> strain (BLI-<i>P. aeruginosa</i>), treated with Brush (30 s rounds, for 90 s) or BIC-40 (30 s, at 5 mm distance) procedure, and then assessed for microbial load, particularly, biofilm removal and re-growth. Our results showed that Brush and BIC-40 treatment reduced microbial load of about 1 and more than 3 logs, respectively. Furthermore, microbial re-growth onto Brush-treated disks rapidly occurred, while BIC-40-treated disks were slowly recolonized, reaching levels of microbial load consistently below those observed with the controls. In conclusion, we provide evidence on the good performance of BIC-40 as titanium device-decontamination system, the clinical implication for such findings will be discussed.