Patients with bacteremia after dental extraction, third-molar surgery, dental scaling, endodontic treatment, and bilateral tonsillectomy were studied by means of lysis-filtration of blood samples with subsequent aerobic and anaerobic incubation. Samples were obtained before, during, and 10 min after treatment. Bacteremia was observed in 100% of patients after dental extraction, 55% of patients after third-molar surgery, 70% of patients after dental scaling, 20% of patients after endodontic treatment, and 55% of patients after bilateral tonsillectomy. Anaerobic microorganisms were isolated more frequently than aerobic microorganisms were, and viridans group streptococci were the most commonly isolated bacteria. Ten minutes after treatment, the frequency as weli as the magnitude of bacteremia showed pronounced reduction.

– The influence of a dry extra‐alveolar period on the viability of cells in the periodontal membrane of human and monkey teeth was examined in vitro. Extracted mature teeth were allowed to dry for 0, 30, 60, 90, and 120 min. Cell viability was examined with the following methods: 1) Culturing the teeth with subsequent trypsination and counting of viable cells. 2) Culturing the teeth with subsequent vital staining of the root surface with neutral red and estimation of the vital stained periodontal membrane area in percentage of the total root surface. Both methods revealed that the number of viable cells in the period declines very rapidly with an increase in drying time. After 2 h it was not possible to demonstrate cell viability using tissue culture technique.

Background and Purpose— There is growing experimental evidence implicating chronic inflammation/infection as an atherosclerotic risk factor. In this study, the involvement of periodontal disease in the development of early atherosclerotic vascular lesions has been evaluated. Methods— In randomly chosen 82 patients with periodontal disease and 31 periodontally healthy individuals subjected to a clinical oral examination in 1985, atherosclerotic risk factor analysis and carotid ultrasonography was performed during reexamination 16 years later. Common carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT) and lumen diameter were measured and intima-media area (cIMA) was calculated. The relationship between IMT and cIMA as dependent variables and periodontal disease, age, gender, body mass index, heredity for atherosclerosis, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, plasma cholesterol, smoking, and education as independent variables was evaluated in a multiple logistic regression model. Results— The mean values of IMT and cIMA were significantly higher in patients with periodontal disease than in controls, both at the right ( P <0.01 and P <0.001, respectively) and left side ( P <0.001 for both variables). When the means of the bilateral measurements of these 2 ultrasonographic variables were tested, multiple logistic regression analysis identified periodontal disease as a principal independent predictor of the common carotid artery cIMA (odds ratio [OR], 5.20; P =0.003) and IMT (OR, 4.64; P =0.004). Conclusions— The present results indicate that periodontal disease is associated with the development of early atherosclerotic carotid lesions.

Specific periodontal microorganisms appeared to induce host response, with increased release of MMP-8 and MMP-9 in gingival pockets as well as of MMP-9 in plasma, possibly triggering its up-regulation in blood.

Young individuals with periodontitis and missing molars seem to be at increased risk for premature death by life-threatening diseases, such as neoplasms, and diseases of the circulatory and digestive systems.

No abstract

Soder P-0, Jin LJ, Soder B: Computerized planimetrie method for clinical plaque measurement. Scand J Dent Res 1993; 101: 21-5. © Munksgaard 1993 A computerized planimetric method for plaque area measurement has been developed. Using a computerized image analysis system (CIAS), the plaque area and tooth area on color slides were digitized and the number of pixels automatically counted. The proposed Plaque Percent Index (P' M. Index) expresses plaque area as a percentage of tooth area. The reproducibility of this method was tested and the influence of photographic technique on the P% Index was determined. The association of the Turesky modified Quigley-Hein plaque index (Q-H Index) and the P% Index was assessed. The present method was highly reproducible for the P% Index with an intraexaminer variation of 0,28% and intraexaminer correlation coefficient of 0,99, The results show that highly reproducible P% Index values with an error of less than 3,0% were obtained when the photographs were taken under the following conditions. For the buccal surfaces of anterior teeth, the slides were photographed within a 20-degree range in the horizontal plane and a 30-degree range in the vertical plane; and for the lingual/palatal surfaces of anterior teeth and the buccal or lingual/' palatal surfaces of posterior teeth, the slides were photographed with an image of the whole tooth surfaces in the photographic mirrors. The comparison of the Q-H Index and the P% Index revealed that for each score of the Q-H Index the corresponding values of P% Index were wide with a significant crossover value, although a strongly positive correlation was found between the Q-H Index and the P% Index (r = 0,92, P

BackgroundPeriodontal disease associates with systemic diseases but corresponding links regarding apical periodontitis (AP) are not so clear. Hence our aim was to study association between AP and the prevalence of systemic diseases in a study population from Sweden.MethodsThe subjects were 150 patients from a randomly selected epidemiological sample of 1676 individuals. 120 accepted to participate and their basic and clinical examination data were available for these secondary analyses where dental radiographs were used to record signs for endodontic treatments and AP. Periapical Index and modified Total Dental Index scores were calculated from the x-rays to classify the severity of AP and dental infection burden, respectively. Demographic and hospital record data were collected from the Swedish National Statistics Center. T-test, chi-square and univariate analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and regressions analyses were used for statistics.ResultsOf the 120 patients 41% had AP and 61% had received endodontic treatments of which 52% were radiographically unsatisfactory. AP patients were older and half of them were smokers. AP and periodontitis often appeared in the same patient (32.5%). From all hospital diagnoses, cardiovascular diseases (CVD) were most common, showing 20.4% prevalence in AP patients. Regression analyses, controlled for age, gender, income, smoking and periodontitis, showed AP to associate with CVD with odds ratio 3.83 (95% confidence interval 1.18–12.40; p = 0.025).ConclusionsThe results confirmed our hypothesis by showing that AP statistically associated with cardiovascular diseases. The finding that subjects with AP also often had periodontitis indicates an increased oral inflammatory burden.