About RotaDent: the rotary brush, its heads and the products around it

The RotaDent range is built around rotary brushing. A single powered handle, the ProCare, is on offer, and nine replacement head listings serve it along with four older handle names: Contour, Plus, Classic and Legacy. Around that core sit hand-held Roto Points, a tray gel and a rinse based on hydrogen peroxide, two fluoride products for children, and syringes of carbamide peroxide gel for take-home whitening.

Replacement stock makes up the bulk of the catalogue. Nine of the twenty-four items are heads, and the cleaners, gels and pastes are used up and bought again as well. The range suits someone setting up rotary brushing for the first time, an owner of an older handle hunting for a matching head, a person cleaning around braces, bridges or crowns, a parent choosing fluoride care for a child, and anyone refilling a whitening routine that already has trays.

Reading a RotaDent head name before you order

Every head title carries two pieces of information: the handle family and the tip profile. Names such as ProCare Short-Tip, Contour Flat Hollow and Legacy/Classic Short Point start with the handle and end with the shape. Six profiles appear across the heads: short tip, short point, long tip, elongated pointy, hollow tip and flat hollow.

The exclusion line deserves a second look. A head made for ProCare and Contour also rules out Classic and Plus handles, and the white long-tip head adds Legacy to that list. The Plus long-tip pair has the narrowest fit of all, made for the Plus alone. When a handle name appears in neither the fit nor the exclusion, as Contour does on the ProCare short-tip head, pick a head that names your handle outright.

Pack sizes are small. Most heads come one to a pack, the Plus heads come as a pair, and the elongated pointy Classic heads come six to a box. White is the usual color, and one long-tip head for ProCare and Contour handles comes in pink.

How to read the strengths on gels, rinses and pastes

The percentages printed on the gels and pastes refer to different active ingredients, so a number on one label cannot be set against a number on another. Whitening syringes are measured in carbamide peroxide, 32% for LumiBrite and 16% for LumiSmile White. Perio Restore carries 1.7% hydrogen peroxide, while the two Kids Kare items carry fluoride: 0.4% stannous fluoride in the brush-on gel and 0.24% sodium fluoride in the toothpaste.

Volumes are small for the whitening gels and larger for the everyday products. Most whitening syringes hold 2.5 mL, and the six-syringe LumiBrite mint gel comes in 0.08 fl oz syringes. The Perio Restore tube is 3 oz, the Kids Kare toothpaste 4 ounces, the brush-on gel 4.3 fl oz and the DenMat rinse 16 fl oz (473 mL).

A dentist or hygienist can say which strength fits a given mouth, and that conversation matters most before a first peroxide routine or when picking fluoride for a child. Several of the gels ship with instructions, and timing and amount should follow them.

Who the RotaDent catalogue suits, and who should look elsewhere

Handle owners get a real choice of tip shapes. Classic handles have three heads to choose from, Legacy handles two, Contour handles four and ProCare handles four, while the Plus has its single long-tip pair.

People with braces, multi-unit fixed bridges or porcelain crowns form a second group. Long and elongated tips reach around brackets and bridgework, and Roto Points are meant for wide spaces, the area under a bridge and the margins of porcelain crowns. On closely spaced teeth the points are a weaker match, and a hygienist can suggest something narrower.

The whitening gels suit someone who already has custom trays, and the kids' fluoride products suit a child who would rather taste berry than mint. Anyone shopping for a powered handle other than the ProCare, for dental floss or for whitening strips will not find them here.

The limits of the range

Only one handle is sold. Contour, Plus, Classic and Legacy handles are supported with heads alone, so a replacement handle from this catalogue is a ProCare, which takes a different set of heads from Classic, Legacy and Plus models.

Trays are part of only one box. Perio Restore ships with two trays alongside its 3 oz tube, whereas the LumiBrite syringes are made for custom trays, and custom trays are not sold in the range.

The gels, rinse and pastes are everyday oral care products. Pain, bleeding gums, sensitive teeth or any other problem in the mouth is a matter for a dentist, and none of these products stands in for that visit.