Abstract
Four hundred fourteen strains of bacteria were isolated from 194 patients with acute odontogenic infection. The cases were divided into 3 groups-pure cultures (66 cases), mixed cultures with two organisms (64 cases), and mixed cultures with 3-6 organisms (64 cases) . The changes of the isolated strains among these 3 groups were studied.
In pure cultures α-Streptococcus was the most common isolate (30.3% of the strains) . Bacteroides was the second (24.2%), and Peptostreptococcus was the third (18.2%) . In mixed cultures with 2 organisms Bacteroides (31.2%) and α-Streptococcus (31.2%) were primarily isolated. In mixed cultures with 3-6 organisms Bacteroides (23.0%), α-Streptococcus (14.5%), Actinomyces (10.4%), Fusobacterium (11.3%) and Peptostreptoccccus (9.5%) were dominant, α-Streptococcus and Peptostreptococcus were isolated more frequently in pure cultures than in mixed cultures with 3-6 organisms. On the contrary, Actinomyces and Fusobacterium were more frequently isolated in mixed cultures with 3-6 organisms than in pure cultures.
