The Impact of Dental Decay in Surgical Site Infection in Mandibular Fracture Management

Abstract

Introduction: Global health survey and meta analyses cite untreated dental caries (UTC) as the most prevalent medical condition worldwide at 31%, and with the global incidence of facial fractures at 7,538,663 it is inevitable that these two disease processes will coexist. The extent of UTC in our catchment is 39% and we conducted a retrospective study to look at the influence of UTC and apical disease of surgical site infection (SSI).