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Blackish stains on the sides of the teeth, with Chlorhexidine use. Suggestion : search for images with Google. |
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Effects of Chlorhexidine
This particular page has nothing much to do with Thailand. We think however it may be of good use to some lucky visitors, who are currently using chlorhexidine as a mount wash or using it as an antiseptic agent to treat gum infections.
Being a pipe smoker, we have been battling stains on our teeth for many years. Honestly there does not seem to be any really good tooth paste or mouth rinse that can really do something about it. The effect of whitening tooth paste (now very widely used) is doubtful in our opinion, and may actually be an irritant in some cases to your gums.
The last two years we kind of noticed more increased staining, and that while we were actually were smoking much less. The location of staining was also rather different before and more uniform over the surfaces of the teeth. Lately, we got much more stains closer to the gums and on the sides of the teeth (see graffic). Our dental hygienist had also much more difficulty in cleaning our teeth, the last time it took her more than two hours to get a good result. On top of that, we also noticed some cracks in the surface of the teeth, along the edges of the stains. Surely, this was an accident waiting to happen, and eventually we discovered a piece of tooth had come loose producing a nice gap that needed a filling. More such events are likely to occur in the future.
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Cracks in the teeth, mostly at the borders of removed stains.
Right : A piece of a tooth came loose, needing a filling. |
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So we did a search on possible reasons for tooth staining besides the well known culprits like smoking, coffee and tea drinking. We were quite startled when we found a lot of pictures of stains produced by chlorhexidine after prolonged use. It so happens we have been using chlorhexidine rather freely as a mouth rinse over the past year or two. Chlorhexidine is sold at pharmacies in Bangkok, and we got our supply there. It is not sold in supermarkets and the like. Most mouth rinses at supermarkets contain Cetylpyridinium Chloride as an antiseptic agent, and also this agent is implicated in causing tooth stains, but apparently not to the same extent as Chlorhexidine. As of now, we did not come across any report indicating that Chlorhexidine also cna cause cracks in the tooth, but personally we are quite convinced the agent is responsible (possibly in interaction with stains produced by smoking, coffee and tea) for the damage to the outer layer of our teeth. Admittedly, it is not advised to use Chlorhexidine for longer than two weeks. We were not aware of this, and it is not mentioned on the mouthwash bottles we purchased at the pharmacy.
Of course, we will never touch the stuff again. Likely we will need some new filling in years to come. Hopefully this can serve as a warning to others using Chlorhexidine as a mouth antiseptic. Maybe there are no problems if you use it just for a short time, but beware.
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