Effectiveness of Dental Bleaching With 37.5% and 6% Hydrogen Peroxide and Its Effect on Quality of Life.

OBJECTIVE:: This study investigated whether it is possible to achieve equally satisfactory results between 37.5% hydrogen peroxide (HP) gel and 6% HP gel. We also assessed the psychosocial impact and self-perception of esthetics generated by extracoronal tooth whitening. METHODS AND MATERIALS:: A prospective, double-blind, randomized clinical trial was carried out. A total of 33 patients were selected from the clinic of the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Chile. The patients included men and women over 18 years old without prior tooth whitening treatments, tooth decay, or restorations of the maxillary anterior teeth. The patients had tooth colors of A3 or less according to the Vita Classical scale, which was determined with a Vita Easy Shade spectrophotometer. The study was carried out with a "split-mouth" design. One side of each mouth was randomly treated with 37.5% HP, and the other side was bleached with 6% HP. Each group received 3 to 12 minutes of treatment with the respective gel applications. Two sessions of bleaching were carried out each week. A spectrophotometer was used to measure the total variation of color (ΔE), and a subjective evaluation was made with Vita Classical scale (ΔSGU) between the baseline (session 1) and different measurement times. We compared ΔE and ΔSGU for both agents using the Mann-Whitney test ( α=0.05). RESULTS:: In both groups, there was variation among the initial color and the color in the different measurement times. In the month after the treatment was completed, ΔE was 9.06 in the 37.5% HP group and 5.69 in the 6% HP group. The difference between the two groups was statistically significant starting in the second session ( p=0.000). CONCLUSION:: There was a significant difference between the effectiveness of the bleaching gel concentrations of 37.5% and 6% HP according to spectrophotometer measurements and subjective evaluations. There was also a positive effect on psychosocial impact and esthetic self-perception among patients.