Palmer notation

Palmer notation (sometimes called the "Military System" and named for 19th-century American dentist Dr. Corydon Palmer from Warren, Ohio[1]) is a dental notation (tooth numbering system). Despite the adoption of the FDI World Dental Federation notation (ISO 3950) in most of the world and by the World Health Organization, the Palmer notation continued to be the overwhelmingly preferred method used by orthodontists, dental students and practitioners in the United Kingdom as of 1998.[2]

The notation was originally termed the Zsigmondy system after Hungarian dentist Adolf Zsigmondy, who developed the idea in 1861 using a Zsigmondy cross to record quadrants of tooth positions.[3] Adult teeth were numbered 1 to 8, and the child primary dentition (also called deciduous, milk or baby teeth) were depicted with a quadrant grid using Roman numerals I, II, III, IV, V to number the teeth from the midline. Palmer changed this to A, B, C, D, E, which made it less confusing and less prone to errors in interpretation.

The Palmer notation consists of a symbol (⏌⎿ ⏋⎾) designating in which quadrant the tooth is found and a number indicating the position from the midline. Adult teeth are numbered 1 to 8, with deciduous (baby) teeth indicated by a letter A to E. Hence the left and right maxillary central incisor would have the same number, "1", but the right one would have the symbol "⏌" underneath it, while the left one would have "⎿".

Comparison of alphanumeric notation, Palmer notation, ISO 3950 (FDI) notation, Universal Numbering System, and paleoanthropology notation
  1. ^ Edward F. Harris (2005). "Tooth-Coding Systems in the Clinical Dental Setting" (PDF). Dental Anthropology. 18 (2): 44. ISSN 1096-9411. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-01-06.
  2. ^ Blinkhorn A, Choi C, Paget H (1998). "An investigon into the use of the FDI tooth notation system by dental schools in the UK". European Journal of Dental Education. 2 (1): 39–41. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0579.1998.tb00034.x. PMID 9588962.
  3. ^ Huszár G (1989). "[The role of the life and works of Adolf Zsigmondy and Ottó Zsigmondy in the history of dentistry]". Fogorv Sz. 82 (12): 357–63. PMID 2689240.