Basic Dental Terminology - UPDATED

hey everyone this is dr ryan here if you're new to mental dental welcome to the channel i made a video about this very topic basic dental terminology about two years ago and i've gotten a ton of feedback from it so now i'm making an updated video you might be a dental student a pre-dental student a dental hygiene student a dental patient but wherever you are in your dental journey welcome to this video and i sincerely hope that you learn a lot about the field so with that let's talk about dental terms used every day in

the field of dentistry so first let's get oriented with the mouth of course we have the lips here that form the outer border of the mouth we have the teeth we have the tongue we have the roof of the mouth which is also called the palette which is divided into a hard palate which is towards the front of the mouth and has underlying bone and the soft palate which is towards the back of the mouth and includes this hanging bit of soft tissue called the uvula the tonsils are also in the back of the mouth

and they serve as part of the immune system now we've separated the teeth from the previous diagram and the patient is open as wide as possible and we have the upper teeth up here and the lower teeth down here and note how the teeth form an arc or an arch like you'd see in certain architecture so we call this one the upper arch or the maxillary arch because the upper jaw that holds these teeth is called the maxilla and we call this one the lower arch or the mandibular arch because the lower jaw that holds

these teeth is called the mandible now we all have four different kinds of teeth the first kind are called the incisors we have four incisors in the front of the mouth for the maxillary arch and also four incisors down here in the front for the mandibular arch there are two central incisors and two lateral incisors in each arch these are used for incising or slicing food like when we bite into an apple for instance of course the four upper incisors also play a big role in how our smile looks and they help with speech like

f and v sounds for example the canines are next and we have two of them in the upper arch right next door to the incisors and we also have two in the lower arch they're also called the eye teeth because they're located in line with your eyes they're used for tearing and holding food and also contribute to the aesthetics of someone's smile in the case of the upper canines the premolars are next and we have both a first and a second premolar in each quadrant of the mouth so we have two premolars here two premolars

here and then we have two and two down here and again we have a first and a second premolar in every quadrant of the mouth they're used for tearing holding and grinding food and lastly we have the molars so we have three molars in each quadrant of the mouth we have a first a second and a third molar the third molars are also called the wisdom teeth and they're the most commonly missing tooth in the mouth molars are used for grinding and mashing food i should mention that these are the adult teeth so let's talk

about the baby teeth the baby teeth also called the primary dentition are shown here and we have 20 of them in total we have 20 baby teeth when all of them come in there are four incisors per arch two canines per arch and four molars per arch note that there are no premolars in the baby teeth these start coming in at around six months of age and teeth coming into the mouth is called eruption and all the baby teeth should have fallen out by at around age 12 teeth falling out of the mouth is called

exfoliation over on the right we have the adult teeth also called the permanent dentition we have 32 of them in total of course some people have extra and some people have missing teeth these teeth start to erupt at around age 6 and then hopefully they never exfoliate as long as our teeth remain healthy all right so i told you there are 32 adult teeth but how do we number them well there are three main numbering systems that dental professionals use today depending on where you live in the world the fdi system is used in most

places in the world just like the metric system the universal numbering system is used in the united states and the palmer notation is used in certain specialties particularly orthodontics and oral surgery and i'll tell you why in just a second let's start with the universal system first and it's just like reading a book you start in the top left corner which is this tooth right here and then you go from left to right so i want to point out really quick that this side is the patient's right side and this is their left side because

remember we're looking at the patient straight on so tooth number one is right here and that's the upper right third molar then we just go in order from there tooth number two number three number four and so on so we'd go around the upper arch until we got to this tooth over here which is the upper left third molar or tooth number 16. after that we jump down to the lower arch and that lower left third molar is tooth number 17 and then we continue numbering here 18 19 20 21 22 keep going all the

way around to the lower right third molar which is tooth number 32. so the upper right third molar is always tooth number one the upper right central incisor is always tooth number eight and so every tooth has a predetermined number from 1 to 32. for the palmer notation we break the mouth into four distinct quadrants the vertical line straight down the center of the mouth is called the midline this horizontal line is simply separating the maxilla and the mandible the palmar notation is a little bit different in that we don't go above the number eight

because each quadrant has eight teeth we start at the midline and work our way out so the central incisors are always tooth number one the lateral incisor is always going to be tooth number two canine will be three first premolar will be four second premolar will be five then first molar second molar and third molar and that's true for every quadrant in the mouth so we could do this for every single quadrant now you might be wondering well how do we distinguish between the ones the twos and all the other teeth among the different quadrants

well notice how the lines intersect so this corner forms a backwards l this corner forms a normal l this one forms an upside down l and then this one over here is an upside down reverse l so every quadrant gets a unique symbol so now all you have to do is take the symbol for that quadrant and then assign a number based on the tooth we're talking about so if we're talking about this upper right central incisor we would just put a one within the symbol if we're talking about this upper left canine we would

put a three among this symbol if we're talking about this first premolar in this quadrant we would just add a four and then down here in the lower right if we're talking about let's say the second molar we would just put a seven in that symbol so an oral surgeon might get a referral from the orthodontist to extract the upper and lower fours and that means the first premolars now that's a whole lot easier than saying please extract tooth number 5 number 12 number 21 and number 28. so you can see how the symmetry and

the simplicity of this system might be preferred by orthodontists and oral surgeons for example and lastly we have the fdi world dental federation system which uses two digits the first digit tells you the quadrant that you're in the upper right is quadrant number one upper left is quadrant number two lower left is quadrant number three and lower right is quadrant number four now the second digit is the exact same as the palmer notation one through eight one being central incisor eight being third molar so now instead of using the symbols here we just use a

number so for the upper right central incisor we would call this tooth number 11 the first one for the quadrant the second one for the number let's pick this lower left second premolar this would be tooth number 35 and so you can do this for every quadrant of the mouth using that method so if you're curious this is how we number the primary dentition or the baby teeth for the universal system instead of using numbers we use letters so instead of number 1 to 20 because there are 20 baby teeth we use letter a through

j and the order of notation is otherwise the same so we would start with a in the top right and then we would continue b c d e f g h i j then we would jump down here to tooth k l m n o p q r s t now for the palmer system we also replace the numbers with letters so instead of one to five because there are now five teeth in each quadrant it's a to e and we use the exact same quadrant symbols that we used before for fdi it's a little

bit different we still use two digits but for primary teeth the quadrants are five six seven and eight instead of one two three four the second digit would just go from one to five like in the palmer system so those are the three most common tooth numbering systems so next time you visit your dentist you can impress them by pointing out a certain tooth and its number so now let's talk about the tooth surfaces so a tooth consists of both a crown and a root the crown is the part above the gums the root is

the part buried below the gums the crown of the tooth has different surfaces on it just like a cube has six surfaces so does the tooth's crown there's a front and a back a left and a right and a top and a bottom and every surface has a name except for the bottom because it's connected directly to the root underneath so the front of the tooth is called the facial surface if we look at our diagram over here on the left this would be the facial surface for tooth number three this would be the facial

surface for tooth number eight and this is the surface of the tooth closest to the face hence why it's called the facial surface interestingly there are other names that can be used to describe the surface depending on where you are in the mouth so if you're talking about a front tooth or an anterior tooth that refers to the incisors as well as the canines this facial surface can also be called the labial surface that's because it's adjacent to the lips if you're talking about the back teeth or the posterior teeth that includes the premolars and

the molars the facial surface can also be called the buccal surface which is another name for the cheeks because those surfaces are adjacent to the cheeks the back surface of the tooth is called the lingual surface and on the diagram this would be the lingual surface for this tooth and this would be the lingual surface for this tooth now this is the surface of the tooth closest to the tongue hence why it's called lingual in the upper arch we can also give this a different name we can call it the palatal surface because it's adjacent

to the palate which is the roof of the mouth up here the side of the tooth that's closest to the midline is called the mesial surface m for midline so for tooth number three this would be the mesial surface tooth number eight this would be the mesial surface of course all this is true for the lower arch as well next is the distal surface that's opposite for mesial it's the one that's furthest away from the midline so for tooth number three this would be the distal surface tooth number eight this would be the distal surface

and you can imagine that everything would be kind of a mirror image to the side across from it so this would be the distal surface for tooth number nine this would be the distal surface for tooth number 14 for instance and lastly we have the chewing surface this is called the occlusal surface which comes from the word occlusion which refers to the upper and lower teeth coming together now in the anterior region this is given a different name this is called the incisal surface that's true for the incisors as well as the canines in the

posterior teeth these biting surfaces are all the occlusal surfaces all right so teeth also have different layers we've probably all heard of the enamel layer and that's the hard calcium-rich surface of each tooth enamel is actually the hardest tissue in the human body dentin is the surface underneath the enamel and it makes up the bulk of these roots here notice how there's no enamel in the root structure dentin is a little bit softer and more yellow color than the enamel because it has more organic material pulp is the soft tissue inside each tooth and it

contains blood vessels as well as nerves the pulp chamber is the part that's in the crown and the pulp canal is the part that occupies the root the gums are the reddish pink tissue that surrounds each tooth it's kind of like the skin around your fingernails and toenails it can be also called the gingiva the bone that is underneath the gums and houses and holds each tooth in place by their roots is called the alveolar bone the alveolar bone is part of each jaw bone that we talked about briefly before the upper jaw bone is

called the maxilla the lower jaw bone is called the mandible the cementum refers to the thin hard tissue that covers the root of each tooth now this tissue has similar density to bone and lastly we have the periodontal ligament which is this tissue right here it's between the cementum and the alveolar bone now we have lots of ligaments in our body and they usually connect one bone to another bone but in this case with the periodontal ligament it connects a tooth which is not technically a bone to the alveolar bone tooth decay is the result

of germs in our mouth specifically oral bacteria the bacteria feeds on sugars in our diet and then they process this sugar to produce acid the acid melts away the mineral content in our enamel and then our dentin it starts out small and unnoticeable but then can grow to produce these big holes and cavities the loss of mineral of the tooth due to the byproducts of bacteria is called caries which comes from the latin karyosis which means full of decay gum disease is the other main disease process that occurs in our mouths plaque refers to a

collection of bacteria on the tooth surface also called biofilm if this plaque is not removed by mechanical brushing and flossing the bacteria can not only melt away our two structure like in caries but can also anger our gum tissue which is called inflammation which can make them red swollen and even painful gingivitis is an early form of gum disease where the gums become inflamed so they're red swollen and can bleed easily again it's usually caused by plaque buildup near the gum tissue if this plaque stays around for a long period of time the situation can

get even worse and then we get to what's called periodontitis which is a more severe infection of the gums it involves not only gingival inflammation but the gums and the bone that supports the teeth can retreat and recede away from the plaque when severe or chronic teeth can loosen over time and even fall out if enough bone is lost so the difference is gingivitis is reversible while periodontitis is irreversible the names of each also explain exactly what they are itis means inflammation so gingivitis means inflammation of the gums and periodontitis means inflammation of the tissues

that surround the tooth now let's go over some specific terminology for dental treatment so restoration refers to any kind of treatment that repairs or places teeth so this can include fillings that replace decayed or missing two structure but this also includes some bigger procedures like crowns and bridges that we'll talk about in a little bit so amalgam is a dental filling material made up of a mixture of different metals such as mercury silver tin and copper it's also known as a silver filling composite is a tooth colored filling material used to repair or cosmetically enhance

teeth that's made of several types of resin-based plastic substances bonding is another term that some dentists may use and it refers to the process by which a tooth-colored filling material is attached to the tooth a sealant is a thin plastic resin coating that can be placed on the biting surfaces of back teeth to help prevent carries from forming within the pits and fissures of these teeth a crown is the top part of a natural tooth that's covered with enamel but it's also the name for a filling that covers the entire natural crown when the tooth

has broken down and can't be fixed by a smaller amalgam or composite filling crowns can be ceramic to match tooth color or they can be gold metal like this crown here a bridge is an appliance that is cemented in place just like a crown but it replaces missing teeth so if this tooth was completely missing for example the bridge would cover the adjacent teeth and then a fake tooth would be placed in this empty space to replace the missing tooth and bridge the gap there another way to replace a missing tooth or teeth is with

a denture so this is something that's taken in and out by the patient and can be a partial denture like this one to replace some missing teeth or it can be a complete denture if all the teeth of that arch are missing an implant is another option for replacing a missing tooth and it's a device that's inserted into the jaw bone to replace a missing tooth and hold a crown or bridge or even anchor a denture in place an extraction is the removal of all or part of a tooth so here we see a root

canal treatment so everyone has root canals but only those with deep enough decay or trauma require a root canal treatment this refers to a treatment that removes the tooth nerve or the pulp tissue and it seals the space with a biologically stable material a crown is usually recommended to cover a back tooth when it gets a root canal treatment to prevent it from breaking a veneer is a thin artificial cover for a tooth to correct its shape or color veneers can be made of ceramic composite or acrylic resin scaling is a procedure that uses instruments

to remove plaque tartar and stains from teeth and root planing refers to the cleaning of a tooth root to remove bacteria calculus and diseased cementum surfaces so a general dentist can provide the treatments we just talked about but there are specialists who receive specialized training for dealing with more complex cases there are more specialties being added every year but as of recording this video in 2020 there are 12 ada recognized dental specialties dental anesthesiologists are specially trained to provide pain management during dental procedures particularly things like intravenous deep sedation and general anesthesia dental public health

specialists focus on advocating for dental and oral health issues at the community level things like water fluoridation endodontists treat problems of the tooth nerve or pulp or infections in the bone associated with infected nerves with procedures such as root canal treatments oral medicine doctors diagnose and manage patients with disorders of the face and mouth and provide biopsies medical management and specialized injections oral pathologists specialize in the research identification and management of oral disease oral radiologists specialize in the production and interpretation of dental x-rays oral surgeons perform tooth extractions trauma surgery corrective jaw surgery and implant

placements or facial pain specialists are specially trained to diagnose and manage head and neck pain like headaches migraines and jaw pain orthodontists correct the position of teeth with braces and other appliances pediatric dentists specialize in treating children and patients with special healthcare needs periodontists specialize in treating the periodontal tissues that surround the teeth so this includes the gums the periodontal ligament bone and even the cementum and prosthodontists replace missing teeth with crowns bridges dentures and the restoration of implants these artificial teeth replacements are known as prostheses hence the name prosthodontist and lastly there are a

few more miscellaneous terms that i'd like to review listed here in alphabetical order first we have abrasion this refers to wear on a tooth usually caused by brushing too hard or using a toothpaste that's too abrasive this is what it can look like if you scrub back and forth too hard with your toothbrush a band refers to a metal ring placed around a tooth with cement as part of orthodontic treatment a bitewing is an x-ray of the crowns of the upper and lower molars and premolars it's the most common x-ray taken at a routine exam

bruxism refers to an unconscious habit of grinding or clenching the teeth which often happens when a person is sleeping or stressed out during the day calculus or tartar refers to a hard deposit of minerals coated with plaque that can build up on the teeth and cause gums to get inflamed the most common place for it to accumulate is the lingual surfaces of the lower incisors and this is the stuff that's scraped off when a dentist cleans your teeth a cusp is one of the pointed parts on the top of a tooth a premolar can also

be called a bicuspid because it has two cusp tips dry socket refers to this phenomenon of pain and inflammation in a tooth socket after the tooth is removed and that happens if the blood clot is lost so if the blood clot is dislodged and displaced from the socket it leaves the bone and the nerve endings exposed which is what causes the pain erosion refers to the loss or wear of enamel by acids not caused by bacteria so this includes things like soda fruit juice and stomach acid in the case of acid reflux an impacted tooth

refers to a tooth that's blocked from erupting through the gums on time and this could be caused by another tooth bone or soft tissue a malocclusion refers to when the upper and lower teeth aren't lined up well in order to bite and chew properly again just the word occlusion like we talked about before refers to the contact between the upper and lower teeth an occlusal guard is a removable device that a person wears over their teeth a mouth guard is used to protect them from damage during sports and other activities and a night guard is

used to protect them from bruxism during sleep a periodontal pocket is a deep area between a tooth and gum that's the result of gum disease so this is what dentists often measure in millimeters during a routine exam when they call out numbers like 1 3 four for instance a retainer is a removable device that's worn in the mouth to prevent teeth from moving out of position it's often used after orthodontic treatment or premature loss of teeth sublingual refers to any area under the tongue there are lots of salivary glands that produce saliva in this area

of the mouth tmj stands for temporomandibular joint this is a joint that connects the lower jaw to the skull now tmd stands for temporomandibular joint dysfunction so everyone has a tmj two in fact one on the right and one on the left but not everyone has tmd this refers to pain clicking popping and other symptoms that are caused by problems with the temporomandibular joint and the associated muscles and lastly xerostomia is a fancy word for dry mouth this can be caused by salivary glands that don't work properly or reduced flow of saliva from certain medications

and that's it for this video guys thank you so much for watching i really hope you learned a lot about dentistry and that you enjoyed the video if you did please like this video and subscribe to this channel for much more on dentistry if you're interested in supporting me and what i do here please check out my patreon page i'll leave a link in the description below thanks again for watching everyone and i'll see you all in the next video