Study of Oral PH and Microbial Flora in 6-12 Years Old Institutionalized Mentally Retard Children of Tabriz City

  Oral health is very important in mentally retarded patients due to their physical and mental limitations. However oral health indexes are evaluated in these patients frequently, but there is limited data about the biological changes in their saliva. This study aimed to evaluate the bacterial flora and saliva PH of 6-12 years old institutionalized mentally retarded children in Tabriz city in 2019.

Method and Materials:

 In this cross sectional study bacterial culture, gram staining and PH of saliva of the salivary samples of 24 children with 6-12 years old, were evaluated. For this purpose salivary samples were placed in two plates containing blood agar and EMB. Then specific culture medium was applied for characterization of grown bacteria. The data was analyzed by SPSS.17 software.

The saliva of these people is in the alkaline range, 7.75. 81% of the grown bacteria were gram positive and 19% were gram negative. The majority of grown bacteria belonged to Staphylococcus aureus with 40.9% and perceptively was followed by Streptococcus mutans with 17.3%. Enterococcus faecalis and Escherichia coli which are not commonly cultured in the saliva samples of healthy people were positive in 13.6% of culture mediums.

physical limitations and altered saliva microbial flora such as presence of  Enterococcus and Escherichia coli take the attentions to the necessity of designing and preparing specific hygiene products and preventive dentistry protocols according to the oral condition of these patients