What is the dentist saying???

NO ONE likes the dentist. Fact.

You can’t talk, most of the time you are dribbling like a fool, and if it’s a particularly long procedure the jaw ache can be agonising.
But most of all, we don’t like the dentist because we don’t understand the jargon, the procedures.

Now we can demystify one of the most common practices you’ve heard but probably not understood – the counting.

Everyone will have experienced this during a check-up: you sit in the chair, tip back into the dentist’s lap and have your teeth numbered.
This is a simple way of identifying the type of tooth, and you will likely hear one number per tooth being reeled off quickly at the beginning of each visit.

The numbers work accordingly:

1=Central incisor
2=Lateral incisor
3=Canine
4=first premolar
5=Second premolar
6=First molar
7=Second molar
8=Third molar or wisdom tooth

Using a coding system of letters and numbers allows dentists to specify which teeth have decay or other problems. When your dentist attaches a letter to a number, he or she is referring to the side or surface area of a tooth. “M” stands for mesial, which is a medical term for the front of a tooth. “D” stands for distal, or the rear side of a tooth. Other letters are used to describe different tooth surfaces.