Objective: To examine variations in the presentation and treatment of reimplanted incisors in children and to determine the effect of these on the prevalence of external root resorption.
Setting: Departments of Paediatric Dentistry, Belfast and Newcastle upon Tyne.
Design: Recording of the timing of the injury and the storage mediums (including air) and of reimplantation, the stage of root development, the degree of contamination and the time of commencement of root treatment. Cases were reviewed clinically and radiographically at intervals of 3 months. Root resorption was classified as present or absent. Logistic regression and cross-tabulations were produced with the presence of resorption set as the outcome.
Results: 128 reimplanted permanent incisor teeth, their median dry time prior to reimplantation being 15 minutes (range 4-52 mins), the median time in a liquid medium being 45 minutes (range 0-650 mins), with a median splinting time of 15 days (range 4-52 days) and a median pulp extirpation time of 15 days (range 0-612 days). There was a lower prevalence of resorption when the period of dryness was less than or equal to 5 minutes (p = 0.025). The prevalence of resorption in teeth with no visible contamination was 57.1%, for those with contamination which were washed clean it was 75%, in those rubbed clean it was 87.5%, and it was 100% for those reimplanted with visible contamination still present (p = 0.014). The corrected odds ratio for contamination was 2.99 and for an extension of 10 minutes of dryness it was 1.29.
Conclusion: The degree of contamination and the period of dryness were the major risk factors for resorption in this study of reimplanted teeth in children.