An investigation into the reduction of tooth contamination in delayed transplantation

90 unerupted human teeth were removed surgically and were cultured for between 1 and 5 weeks in one of three storage media supplemented with different combination of antibiotics. Each tooth was screened for microbiological contamination after culture. Medium 199 with benzyl penicillin, cephaloridine and gentamicin gave the highest % of sterile teeth (82.1%). Discriminant analysis showed that the addition of antibiotics to the culture medium was the main factor contributing to sterility; irrigation with sterile saline during tooth removal, ultrasonic treatment before culture and the pre-operative tooth position were also found to be important.