Postmortem pink teeth: in vitro production.

The aim of this study was to produce pink teeth experimentally with cadaver blood and to correlate the time sequence of the coloration with the pattern of hemolysis of the blood. The blood from 7 cadavers (postmortem period 8-58 h) was used to stain 7 groups of 14 teeth each. All the teeth were divided longitudinally and one half received blood which contained a piece of skin (to imitate pulpal autolysis) and the other half cadaver blood only. Circumpulpal discoloration commenced on the sixth day postmortem and increased to 18 days. At 6 days, hemolysis was evident histologically and the separation between plasma and blood cells had disappeared in centrifuged blood. No difference was noticed between the blood with and without skin. It is concluded that pink staining of teeth can only occur after hemolysis and that discoloration becomes obvious macroscopically at about 6 days.