A tooth chart with numbers can be an invaluable tool in dental health care. It’s the easiest way to tell your teeth apart and ensure that they’re all present and accounted for! The first step toward this goal is to get familiar with the chart itself, so here are some of the basics you should know about your personalized chart (starting from the front of your mouth and moving toward the back). Read on to learn more about the tooth chart with numbers!
Understanding The Tooth Chart
There are many tooth charts available, but one of the most popular is called the tooth chart (sometimes spelled toothchart). This chart groups teeth by surface, which allows you to quickly determine which teeth they are talking about. For example, say your dentist refers to a patient’s right maxillary lateral incisor. By referencing The Tooth Chart, you can tell that your dentist is describing your upper right front tooth—because that’s what lateral means: on the side. Now do you get it? It’s really simple when you see it! If not, don’t worry; there are plenty of other tooth charts out there for different regions. You just need to find one that works for you!
Teeth Mapping by Function
Teeth numbers 1-8 are teeth used to chew. These canines, premolars, and molars are meant for tearing through hard or fibrous foods. You’ll want to brush these teeth thoroughly with a soft bristle toothbrush two times a day to keep them clean. Teeth numbers 9-16 are your incisors, canines, and bicuspids; these teeth have thin enamel on them for small amounts of chewing but more importantly allow you to grab items in your mouth without crushing them between your molars (such as cutting an apple). To keep these teeth healthy, make sure you brush after meals so that particles don’t accumulate on top of your enamel.
How to Read the Tooth Numbers
Tooth numbers are used to specify your unique prescription—and they’re pretty easy to understand once you know what they mean. Here’s a quick rundown of how to read them: The first number tells you which teeth are in play. This number can range from 1 (for one tooth) up to 8 (for eight teeth). So, if your dentist tells you he wants to correct 4th molars, that means he wants to change four molars—the top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right. It doesn’t matter which order those teeth appear in your mouth; as long as they’re all there, you get credit for all four. Next is a slash or dash followed by two numbers separated by another slash or dash. These are called diastemas, and they indicate where teeth should be moved on either side of an arch-shaped line drawn between two teeth on either side of an arch-shaped line drawn between two teeth on either side of an arch-shaped line drawn between two teeth on either side of an arch-shaped line drawn between two teeth on either side…you get it. Just keep drawing lines until you reach both sides! If there is no slash or dash, then just write 00.
Tooth Numbers 1-8
So here’s a tooth chart with numbers. You can see that teeth are numbered from one to eight, with tooth one being your lower right canine (cuspid) tooth, and eight being your upper left wisdom tooth. It’s easy to remember which is which if you think about teeth as sets of four starting from either side of your mouth: top, bottom, then front or back. That gives you two four-tooth units on either side—four in total—so each unit is referred to as a quadrant. You know that an upper quadrant has to do with the top set of teeth in your mouth, but what about lower quadrant? Lower refers to how far down they are within each quadrant; we measure them using numbers in sequence.
