Information about these dental photos

     In medicine and dentistry "left" and "right" are based upon the orientation of the patient's body and not how they appear in a photograph of a smile.  For example, a reference to the upper left teeth will actually appear to be on the right side when viewing a picture of the face and similarly an upper right tooth will appear to be on the left side.

     Many words in dentistry like oral and mouth have a similar meaning and are frequently used together to help our readers find specific words they best understand.  This is particularly important because a majority of our visitors are from countries where English is not their primary language.  Maxilla or maxillary refer to the upper jaw.  Mandible or mandibular refer to the lower jaw.

     There are many other similar word combinations used throughout this website because our pages are read by patients and dentists.  A few of the most common are discussed here.  Tooth decay, tooth cavity and dental caries all mean the same thing.  Tooth, teeth and dental are also frequently interchanged as in teeth veneers or dental veneer laminate.  Oral rehabilitation and dental reconstruction mean smile makeover.  The word for x-ray may be used with or without a hyphen (this is true for other words too) and can also be called a radiograph.