Oral health at proderm – The whole, naked tooth

20 June 2022

In this month’s proderm story, our interviewer wants to know everything there is to know about oral health, from sensitive teeth to bad breath. Our project manager and resident artist Caroline Manger, who has managed a great variety of oral health studies at proderm, was not only available to illustrate a very sensitive tooth, but also to answer all our questions about oral health!

Caroline Manger

Project Manager

Hi Caro! I think the initial question is pretty clear: What kind of oral health studies are we commonly doing here at proderm?

We mainly do cosmetics and consumer care studies. But we can absolutely also do pharmaceutical and medical device studies.

Ok, what would be typical products in consumer care studies?

Well, toothpastes, toothbrushes, mouthwashes, tooth whitening products. We had one that was a tooth paste in combination with some sort of LED device.

Tooth whitening products?

Oh yes – Testing tooth whitening properties of products is one of the most common things we do in oral care!

So, the subjects need to have discolored teeth, I suppose?

That’s not a problem. People drink a lot of tea and coffee.

So how do you measure that – Is there something like a tooth color scale?

Oh yeah! The Vita shade guide – It’s like a card where there are lots of little plastic plates with different colors. You usually use these at the dentist when you need to ensure dentures fit in with the rest of the teeth in terms of color, for example.

But the way we usually assess coloring of teeth is by taking photos and evaluating the pictures photo-analytically. They are not like cool marketing photos, though, as people have to wear these cheek retractors.

Ah, photography and image analysis seem to be some sort of core competency at proderm

Yes, of course we always try and use that, as that’s actually what makes us special – with the many photo devices and photo systems that we have.

clinical imaging oral care

Not a cool marketing photo? We disagree! Clinical photography of bare teeth allows for objective color analysis.

So what else is there?

Well, plaque and gum health. It’s a bit of a departure from the cosmetic impact; it’s also about health, a healthy oral cavity and healthy gums.

For plaque scoring we virtually paint the teeth with a blue color like you do with children at the dentist to show them how bad they are at brushing their teeth.

I think I’ve seen that in TV commercials.

Exactly! At the end of the day, it’s always a visual assessment. Gum health assessment goes a bit in the same direction. You always have a visual assessment, which is just a bit nastier, because you basically go along the gums with this probe thing until it bleeds and then you assess the strength of the bleeding visually. And that is also the crux of both plaque scoring and gum health assessments. It is really challenging to show product differences in such studies because these are usually minimal differences and you need super good evaluators.