Protect Your Child with Toothprints – The Unique Impression
As it’s National Safety Month, we’re offering a complimentary Toothprints bite impression as part of your child’s regular dental check-up appointment during the month of June.
Toothprints offers a unique identification system to help protect our young patients between the ages of 3 to 12. Please contact our office to let us know if you’d like to include a free Toothprints impression for your child as part of their appointment during the month of June.
Why Get Toothprints?
Because of the uniqueness of each person’s bite impression, toothprints can aid in the recovery and identification of lost, missing or unidentified children. Besides offering a bite impression, the saliva collected from the impression provides cells for a DNA sample, as well as a scent on the wafer that can help dogs track a lost or missing child.
What are Toothprints?
Toothprints are a soft, thermoplastic wafer that is placed in the child’s month to make a bite impression. This impression provides a unique recording of their teeth and their jaws. Just like fingerprints, this impression becomes a permanent record, that’s unique to every child. No two people have the same bite impression. (Even identical twins have different Toothprints!)
How Often Should My Child Get a Toothprint?
Children should get their first impression between the ages of 3 and 4 (after all baby teeth are evident), then again at 8 or 9 (after upper and lower front teeth and first permanent molars) and finally at age 11 or 12, if there are no fillings or other dental identifiers.
How it’s Done
The Toothprints dental process is very easy. We soften the thermoplastic wafer in warm water and then instruct your child to “bite tight like a lion” for a 10 count. That’s it. Once we take your child’s bite impression, we place it into a zip lock bag with their name on it. Please do not open this bag, as it may contaminate the scent, as well as the DNA sample. We recommend that parents then keep this bag in a safe place (and remember where it is), with a recent photograph.
Toothprints is a dental service that only takes seconds but provides parents with a long-lasting identification system. If you’re interested in adding Toothprints as part of your child’s check-up appointment, please contact us.