DENTAL BACTEREMIA IN CHILDREN

Bacteremia resulting from dental extraction is regarded as an importan t cause of bacterial endocarditis, and it is therefore recommended tha t patients undergoing tooth extraction be given prophylactic antibioti cs. As dental procedures other than extractions may also cause bactere mias, we studied a variety of dental procedures routinely used in pedi atric dentistry, Blood samples for cultures were obtained 30 s after e ach of 13 dental operative procedures in 735 anesthetized children age d 2-16 years. Four procedures used for conservative dentistry caused b acteremias significantly more often than the baseline value of 9.4%: p olishing teeth 24.5%, intraligamental injection 96.6%, rubber dam plac ement 29.4%, and matrix band with wedge placement 32.1%. In comparison , toothbrushing alone caused a bacteremia on 38.5% of occasions. The o rganisms isolated were typical of adontogenic bacteremias in that 50% of the isolates were identified as varieties of viridans streptococci. These data show that a wider variety of dental procedures than was pr eviously documented cause bacteremia.