The Significance of Dental Findings on Personal Identification

Abstract

By the tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean at the end of last year, more than 200,000 of human life were lost. Since there are many famous resorts in the stricken area, a lot of overseas' tourists were also killed by that tsunami.
It is well known that dentists were dispatched from many countries and they performed victim's identifications by the method of the dental findings. Japan also sent several dentists to Thailand and Indonesia respectively. In Japan, more than 90 percent of people have a record of dentistry consultation, therefore, the dental findings are able to work as a very effective means for personal identification. Under such circumstances, there are six laboratories concerned to forensic odontology among 28 dental schools and in the most of those schools; forensic odontology is lectured to the students.
Furthermore, dental associations in cooperation with police are organized in every prefectures in Japan and it is established such system as they promptly set out and cooperate with police, once disaster or criminal case should be occurred. Dentist as a member of the said associations regularly receive the training how to take the dental findings and confirm the identity of person at postmortem inspection because it is thought that the skill of dentist to do the personal identification can be improved by the practice of daily cases.