[A microbiologic study on anaerobic bacteremia after dental extraction]

It has been known for many years that tooth extraction can cause bacterial dissemination into blood stream, that is, bacteremia. Besides endocarditis--causing bacteria, alpha-hemolytic streptococci, anaerobes are involved in the post- extraction bacteremia. They are of clinical importance because they can cause abscesses in the various parenchymatous organs such as the liver, lung, and brain through anachoresis. The purpose of this study is to establish the types of species of anaerobes associated with post--extraction bacteremia, and to give the baseline to the succeeding study of sensitivity tests of various antibiotics, thus clinicians can chose the right ones. 10ml of blood was sampled pre- and post- operatively from 32 patients and incubated in anaerobic chamber. The followings are the results of this study. 1. All the preoperative blood samples showed negative culture. 2. Postoperative blood samples from 8 out of 10 patients (80%) in group 1, from 1 out of 15 (73.3%) in group 2, and 2 out of 7 (28.6%) in group 3 yielded anaerobic and facultative species. 3. Organisms detected were species belonging to the genera Streptococcus, Bacteroides, Actinomyces, Staphylococcus, Peptostreptococcus, Peptococcus, Propionebacterium, Fusobacterium, nonenterococcus, and Corynebacterium.