UK Dental Charting Symbols Cheat Sheet (2026)

Dental charting symbols are the shorthand UK dentists use to record clinical findings on a tooth chart. Get the symbol wrong and your records become ambiguous - and ambiguous records are the single most common reason for GDC complaints to escalate. Here is the complete cheat sheet of UK dental charting symbols, organised by category.

Surface symbols (the basics)

Every UK dental chart uses these five surface abbreviations:

• O - Occlusal (the biting surface of premolars and molars)
• M - Mesial (the surface closest to the midline)
• D - Distal (the surface furthest from the midline)
• B - Buccal (the cheek-facing surface, also called Facial in some texts)
• L - Lingual (the tongue-facing surface) or P - Palatal (the roof-facing surface, upper teeth only)

Combined surfaces use the abbreviations together. Common ones:

• MO - mesio-occlusal
• DO - disto-occlusal
• MOD - mesio-occluso-distal (a three-surface restoration)
• MID - mesio-incisal-distal (anterior teeth)
• MODBL - mesial, occlusal, distal, buccal, and lingual (a five-surface restoration)

Restoration material symbols

| Symbol | Material | |---|---| | Comp | Composite | | Am | Amalgam | | GIC | Glass ionomer cement | | Cr (or MCC / PFM) | Crown (metal-ceramic, porcelain-fused-to-metal) | | e.max | Lithium disilicate ceramic crown | | Zr | Zirconia crown | | Br | Bridge | | Vn (or Ven) | Veneer | | Inl | Inlay | | Onl | Onlay | | RCT | Root canal treatment | | IMP | Implant | | TF | Temporary filling |

Tooth status symbols

| Symbol | Meaning | |---|---| | + | Present and charted | | X or / | Extracted / missing | | RR | Retained root | | UE | Unerupted | | PE | Partially erupted | | Ank | Ankylosed | | Sup | Supernumerary | | Frac | Fractured | | Mob | Mobile (followed by Miller grade I, II, or III) | | Tend | Tender to percussion | | Sens | Sensitive |

BPE (Basic Periodontal Examination) codes

The BSP-recommended sextant scoring system. Each sextant gets one code, the worst finding wins:

• 0 - Pockets ≤3.5mm, no bleeding, no calculus, no overhangs
• 1 - Pockets ≤3.5mm, bleeding on probing
• 2 - Pockets ≤3.5mm, calculus or plaque-retentive factors
• 3 - Pockets 3.5-5.5mm (full perio chart needed for that sextant)
• 4 - Pockets >5.5mm (full 6PPC needed for the whole mouth)
• ***** - Furcation involvement (suffix to any code)

Plaque + bleeding indices

• PBI - Plaque + Bleeding Index, recorded as % of sites with plaque or bleeding on probing
• MGI - Modified Gingival Index (0 = no inflammation, 4 = severe inflammation)
• MPS / MBS - Modified Plaque Score / Modified Bleeding Score (HGDM toolkit, used in BSP staging)

Mobility grades (Miller classification)

• 0 - No detectable mobility
• I - Mobility ≤1mm horizontally
• II - Mobility >1mm horizontally
• III - Mobility vertically and horizontally (depressible in the socket)

Furcation involvement (Glickman / Hamp)

• F1 - Initial furcation involvement (probable horizontally <3mm)
• F2 - Partial through-and-through (probable >3mm but not fully through)
• F3 - Through-and-through, soft tissue covers entrance
• F4 - Through-and-through, fully exposed

Colour conventions on UK paper charts

Not all UK practices use these but most do:

• Red - active caries / pathology / new findings
• Blue - existing restorations / treated findings
• Black - tooth identifiers / chart structure
• Yellow / orange - planned treatment / treatment plan items

Digital charts in modern PMS usually replicate these as colour-coded layers.

Reading a charted tooth in a UK clinical note

A full sentence example:

UR6 MOD Comp (placed 12/2024). UR7 distal caries, planned MOD comp. LL6 PE, mesial cavity, planned restoration after eruption assessment. BPE: 1 1 2 / 2 1 1.

Four findings, each unambiguous, recorded in shorthand any UK dentist can read.

Why this matters for AI dental notes

If you are using an AI dental scribe, the symbol set above is what it should be using. Generic AI tools (Otter, Whisper, ChatGPT) will produce free text that ignores notation conventions. Dentistry Dashboard is built around UK dental notation specifically - dictate "upper right six MOD composite, placed today, A2 shade" and the AI writes the note in the exact format above.

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