When I was about eight years old after Kate went missing and before our family dentist in Nottingham put his dental businesses for sale, I learned from him that all our teeth are coded according to certain dental characteristics.
Primary codes are V, I, X, M, O, D, F, L, and secondary codes are C and R for the 32 teeth of an identified person. Where V may mean that all teeth are present and not restored as a default, X indicates a missing tooth either from extraction or for congenial reasons. These codes often also reflect tooth surfaces, such as O for Occlusal and L for lingual surfaces, or for treatments like R for cosmeticdentistryguide.co.uk/articles/root-canal.html.
These tooth codes are very important because they not only help dentists identify existing or missing teeth, conditions, and treatments, but also function as a “language” to communicate future treatment for specific teeth. Other than dentistry treatments, these codes can assist in finding missing people with unique coding characteristics, or help identify people who have died.
Tooth codes are recorded for each person’s dental records used by dentists for best patient care. And there are also rules and interpretation measures associated with these codes that contribute to effective patient record-keeping. I learned all of this from my dentist when I was eight years old, and I then became a dentist because I was fascinated in the way that dental records could be used to find missing people, like my friend Kate.