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Dental Polishing
Dental polishing (MeSH D003775) creates a smooth, glossy surface finish on teeth, dentures, or amalgam restorations using abrasives, rubber cups, or air-polishing powders such as glycine and erythritol; evidence for routine polishing alone is limited.
Dental prophylaxis
Dental prophylaxis is a routine professional tooth cleaning, a scale and polish that removes plaque, tartar, and stain from teeth, distinct from surgical root planing.
Dental Prosthesis
Dental prosthesis: any appliance replacing missing teeth and associated structures, spanning fixed bridges, removable dentures, and implant-supported restorations; distinguished by support, retention, survival, and bone-loss outcomes.
Dental Prosthesis Design
Dental prosthesis design, the planning of crowns, bridges, dentures, and implant-supported prostheses, now spans conventional, CAD/CAM, additive, and AI-assisted workflows, with fit accuracy and biomechanics as key outcomes.
Dental Prosthesis Repair
Dental prosthesis repair (MeSH D017269) is reuniting or replacing a broken or worn dental prosthesis or part, such as a denture clasp, tooth, or flange; a minimally invasive alternative to full replacement with similar survival outcomes.
Dental Prosthesis Retention
Dental prosthesis retention (MeSH D017268) is holding a dental prosthesis in place by design, devices, or adhesives; covers denture physics, implant attachments (bar, ball, magnet, Locator), and denture adhesives.
Dental Pulp Devitalization
Dental pulp devitalization is the deliberate destruction of tooth pulp vitality, historically with arsenic or paraformaldehyde pastes, now largely replaced by anesthesia and vital pulp therapy with calcium silicate cements.
Dental Pulp Test
Dental pulp test: clinical tests assessing tooth pulp health. Sensibility tests (cold, heat, electric) stimulate nerves; vitality tests (pulse oximetry, laser Doppler flowmetry) measure blood flow. Pooled accuracy figures distinguish all five methods.
Dental radiography
Dental radiography is X-ray imaging of the teeth and jaws: intraoral bitewings, periapical films, and panoramic radiographs each cover a defined range, and cone-beam CT adds three-dimensional imaging for selected tasks.
Dental restoration
Dental restoration: repairing tooth structure with direct fillings (amalgam, composite, glass ionomer) or indirect laboratory/CAD-CAM prostheses (gold, zirconia, lithium disilicate, PFM), distinguished by fabrication location, materials, and longevity.
Dental Restoration Repair
Dental restoration repair, or reparative dentistry, fixes localized defects in existing fillings and crowns by adding composite rather than replacing the whole restoration, preserving tooth structure with comparable longevity.
Dental Restoration Wear
Dental Restoration Wear, a MeSH-indexed clinical category, covers loss of restorative material and opposing tooth structure from occlusal function; measured by 3D profilometry, quantified preferably as volume loss, and worsened by bruxism and hard ceramics.
Dental Soldering
Dental soldering joins metal parts of dental appliances, such as bridges and orthodontic bands, using a lower-melting filler alloy; technically brazing above 425°C, now often replaced by laser welding.
Dental Stress Analysis
Dental Stress Analysis is a dental research field, indexed by the National Library of Medicine since 1972, that measures how forces distribute through teeth, bone, implants, and restorations.
Dental Technology
Dental technology: the field of dentistry for designing and constructing dental appliances (dental prosthetics, dentures, crowns), also called Technology, Dental; spans dental laboratory craft, CAD/CAM, and intraoral scanning.
Dental Tissue Conditioning
Dental tissue conditioning is a prosthodontic procedure that uses a temporary soft liner on a denture to let inflamed oral tissues heal before new dentures are made.
Dentate gyrus
Dentate gyrus, hippocampal subregion and input channel of the hippocampal formation; three-layered cortex with granule cells, mossy fibers to CA3, adult neurogenesis in the subgranular zone, and a debated role in pattern separation.
Dentatorubral pallidoluysian atrophy
Dentatorubral pallidoluysian atrophy (DRPLA, Naito-Oyanagi disease, Haw River syndrome) is a rare autosomal dominant CAG repeat expansion disorder of the ATN1 gene causing ataxia, myoclonus, epilepsy, chorea, and dementia, most common in Japan.
Dentin dysplasia
Dentin dysplasia (DD), hereditary dentin defect with abnormal dentin and root development; types I and II, autosomal dominant, DSPP-related (DD-II), prevalence about 1/100,000 for DD-I.
Dentinogenesis imperfecta
Dentinogenesis imperfecta (DGI, opalescent teeth) is an autosomal dominant hereditary dentin defect, prevalence 1/6,000-1/8,000, caused by DSPP mutations; Shields types I-III, with DGI-I syndromic with osteogenesis imperfecta.
Dentist
Dentist: licensed oral health professional diagnosing and treating teeth, mouth, and jaw conditions. US DDS/DMD 8-year pathway, UK 5-year degree; 201,117 US dentists in 2020; median wage $176,110 (2025).
Dentistry
Dentistry, also called dental medicine, is the medical field covering the oral cavity, teeth, and maxillofacial structures; it treats caries, periodontal disease, and oral cancer, has 12 recognized US specialties, and addresses a 3.7-billion-person global disease burden.
Dentofacial anomalies
Dentofacial anomalies (ICD-11 DA0E, ICD-10 K07) are congenital or acquired deviations of dental and oral structures from normal form, function, or position, including malocclusion, jaw size anomalies, and tooth position anomalies, treated by orthodontics or orthognathic surgery.
Dentofacial functional abnormalities
Dentofacial functional abnormalities (ICD-11 DA0E.6, ICD-10 M26.5/K07.5) are disorders of abnormal jaw closure or opening and malocclusion from swallowing, mouth-breathing, or habit causes, overlapping orofacial myofunctional disorders and treated with myofunctional therapy and orthodontics.
Denton Cooley
Denton A. Cooley (1920-2016), Houston cardiac surgeon, founded the Texas Heart Institute, performed the first successful U.S. heart transplant (1968) and the world's first total artificial heart implant (1969), and feuded with Michael DeBakey.
Denture Bases
A denture base is the part of a denture that contacts the mouth's soft tissue and holds the artificial teeth, usually made of the acrylic resin PMMA.
Denture Design
Denture design: the planning and placement of structural elements (retainers, rests, framework, connectors) of removable partial dentures, covering support, stability, retention principles, Kennedy classification, biomechanics, and implant-assisted designs.
Denture hyperplasia
Denture hyperplasia, or epulis fissuratum, is a benign fibrous overgrowth of oral mucosa caused by chronic irritation from ill-fitting denture flanges, treated by excision and denture correction.
Denture Identification Marking
Denture identification marking is the practice of placing a patient's name, ID number, or code on or inside a denture, helping identify disaster victims and preventing loss in hospitals and care homes.
Denture Liners
Denture liners (soft liners, resilient reliners) are acrylic or silicone materials applied to a denture's fitting surface to cushion mucosa and distribute load; acrylics harden as plasticizers leach, silicones bond poorly, and both risk Candida colonization.