Perhaps it’s a macabre topic but with so many people watching “True Crime” shows, combined with the existence of a multitude of fictitious crime shows, we thought today we might look at the role of the Dentist as the Detective, helping to solve crimes. We won’t get gruesome, this is a family site after all, but if you’ve ever wondered about some of that forensic stuff on TV and whether it’s real – today we’ll answer the question!
- Is it true that Dentists can help solve crimes?
Actually it is. Almost like a fingerprint, your teeth and more importantly, any dental work you have had done, are unique to you and to you alone. A Dentist can use old dental x-rays for example, to help positively identify the victim of a crime. He or she can do this using old dental records and comparing them to new findings. Particularly helpful is the fact that “many dental features, such as tooth root curvature, tooth position, impacted teeth, extra teeth, and tooth crown anomalies, are unique to a person (making) “this technique of identification ….. especially useful. “ (1)
- Wanna make an impression? Bite hard!
Teeth are one of the hardest substances in the human body and they can leave an impression! A Forensic Dentist can then use these impressions to compare against existing medical records. A Forensic Dentist will be able to analyze tooth and bite shapes, review dental records and may even make casts of teeth to help solve crimes. There is much in the way of modern technology that is now available for use and like the quality of DNA evidence, Forensic Dentistry is certainly considered to be a reliable source of evidence for convicting criminals. (2)
- What our teeth can tell us?
A Forensic Dentist can tell a lot about a person from their teeth including in some cases, that persons age. There are other circumstances too where teeth can tell us a story but in the interests of this being a family website (as we alluded to earlier) we won’t dwell on those. Suffice to say, these true crime stories and fictitious CSI episodes really do tell the true facts when it comes to what our teeth can tell us!
We’ll end by talking about February being a leap year. Leap Years only occur every four years so why are they important and why do we bring up the Leap Year in our blog? Because it seems like the perfect time to remind you to get your teeth checked regularly – in other words, more often than every four years! On that note, we’ll end today’s episode of Dentists as True Crime Fighters by saying as always, ”don’t forget to be a BFF with your mouth and Brush that SMILE!”
(1) “forensicoutreach.com” / (2) “ameritasinsight.com”
