Dental Treatment Plan Abbreviations Explained

You get a sheet from the dentist that says something like UR6 MOD comp, LL7 RCT + PFM, 2BW, BPE 2 2 1 / 2 3 2 with a figure at the bottom. Most of it is shorthand made up of three parts: which tooth, which surface of that tooth, and what is being done to it. Once you can read those three parts, you can check the plan yourself, ask ChatGPT or Claude sensible questions about it, and tell whether the price is normal or whether you should get a second quote.

This page only covers the shorthand. For a wider look at how plans are put together, how NHS and private plans differ, and what you’re entitled to before you agree to anything, start with the Treatment Plans Explained guide.

How UK dentists name your teeth

Most UK practices use Palmer notation. Your mouth is split into four quarters, called quadrants, and the teeth in each quarter are numbered 1 to 8, counting from the front teeth backwards.

                 YOUR UPPER TEETH
  UR  8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8  UL
  ---------------------+---------------------
  LR  8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8  LL
                 YOUR LOWER TEETH

UR means upper right, UL upper left, LR lower right and LL lower left. “Right” means your right, not the dentist’s. When the dentist faces you, your UR teeth are on their left, and this trips up a lot of people looking in a mirror.

The numbers stand for the same type of tooth in every quadrant:

So UR6 is your upper right first molar, the big chewing tooth roughly under your right cheekbone. LL8 is your lower left wisdom tooth.

Some practices and software (and most hospital letters) use the FDI system instead. It writes each tooth as two digits: the first digit is the quadrant (1 = UR, 2 = UL, 3 = LL, 4 = LR) and the second is the tooth. UR6 becomes 16 and LL7 becomes 37. If a line on your plan starts with a two-digit number between 11 and 48, it’s almost certainly FDI and not a quantity or a price.

Children’s milk teeth use letters A to E in Palmer notation (URE is an upper right second baby molar), or quadrants 5 to 8 in FDI.

Surface letters: the “MOD” in UR6 MOD

Every tooth has five sides, and fillings are described by which sides they cover.

These letters get combined. MO covers the front side and the top, DO the back side and the top, and MOD runs across the top and down both sides. It’s a big filling, and on a private plan it usually costs more than a single-surface O filling, because many practices charge by the number of surfaces. If your quote has UL5 O comp £120 and UR6 MOD comp £210, that difference is normal.

Treatment abbreviations and what they typically cost

These are the codes you’re most likely to see. The private price ranges are rough figures from published UK practice price lists in 2025 and 2026. London and city-centre practices tend to charge above them, and practices in small towns often charge below.

Denture notation uses a slash, with the upper jaw before the slash and the lower jaw after it. P/P is a partial denture top and bottom. F/- is a full upper denture with nothing on the lower jaw.

Examination, X-ray and gum codes

The first lines on most plans are the check-up and diagnosis items, and the abbreviations here tend to confuse people more than the treatment codes.

The BPE, or Basic Periodontal Examination, is the line people ask AI about most. It’s a quick gum screening that splits your mouth into six sections (sextants) and gives each one a score from 0 to 4. It’s written as two rows of three, top jaw first:

BPE   2 | 2 | 1
      2 | 3 | 2

A 0 means healthy gums. A 1 means some bleeding, and 2 means there’s tartar to remove. A score of 3 means there are pockets of 3.5 to 5.5 mm between gum and tooth, and 4 means pockets deeper than 5.5 mm. A * after a number means the bone has been lost between the roots of a molar. Any 3 or 4 usually explains why RSD or several hygienist visits show up later on the plan. The BPE is a screening score, though, and doesn’t diagnose anything. A 3 is a reason for more detailed charting, not proof of serious gum disease.

NHS bands and the FP17DC form

NHS dentistry in England is charged in bands, and each band is a single fee for the whole course of treatment. From 1 April 2025 the charges were:

The charges usually go up each April, so check nhs.uk for the current figures. You pay the highest band your course reaches, once, however many items there are. A plan with four fillings, one root canal and two extractions costs £75.30, not seven separate fees. If an NHS plan lists a charge per filling, ask about it.

For Band 2 and Band 3 courses in England you should get a written plan on a form called the FP17DC. It lists the NHS treatment and any private items separately. A “mixed” plan, such as NHS fillings with a private white crown, is allowed, but the private parts must be marked and priced on their own. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all charge differently, so the band figures above won’t apply there.

A worked example: decoding a private quote

Here is a realistic private plan, with the personal details removed:

COURSE OF TREATMENT: PRIVATE                  14/09/2026
NPE + 2BW + 1PA (LL6)                             £95.00
BPE 2 2 1 / 2 3 2
PMPR 45 min (hyg)                                 £85.00
UR6 MOD comp                                     £210.00
UL5 DO comp                                      £165.00
LL6 RCT (3 canals)                               £750.00
LL6 P&C                                          £180.00
LL6 E-max crown                                  £850.00
LR8 surg XLA                                     £320.00
TOTAL                                          £2,655.00

Read in plain English, it says this. You’re having a new patient check-up with two back-tooth X-rays and one close-up X-ray of the lower left first molar. Your gums have tartar in most areas and one moderate pocket in the lower front, so a 45-minute hygienist clean is booked. You need a large white filling across three sides of the upper right first molar, and a two-sided white filling in the upper left second premolar. The lower left first molar needs a root canal through three canals, then a post and core to build it back up, then an all-ceramic crown. Finally, the lower right wisdom tooth is coming out surgically.

Most of the individual fees fall inside the typical ranges. The obvious thing to look at is the LL6, where three lines add up to £1,780 for one tooth. That’s not unusual for a molar root canal and crown, but it’s the decision that matters most. Worth asking:

• What is the long-term outlook for this tooth after root canal treatment?
• Is the post and core definitely needed, or is that decided once the root canal is done?
• What would extraction followed by an implant cost (roughly £2,000 to £3,000), and why is saving the tooth better here?
• Would a PFM crown at £550 to £700 work just as well on a back tooth that nobody sees?

If you did the same course on the NHS in England, it would be one Band 3 charge of £326.70. The crown would usually be PFM or metal, not E-max, and getting an NHS appointment is the real obstacle in many areas.

Getting ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini to decode it properly

Take out your name, date of birth, address and NHS number first. Then type the lines in, or upload a photo of the plan to ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini or Microsoft Copilot (all four can read photographed documents). If you tell the tool which notation the plan uses and exactly what you want back, you get a much more useful answer.

I'm in England and have a private dental treatment plan. It uses UK
Palmer notation (UR, UL, LR, LL; teeth numbered 1-8 from the front).
For each line:
1. Say which tooth it is in plain English.
2. Explain the treatment in one or two sentences.
3. Say which NHS band it would fall under in England.
4. Give a typical UK private price range and say whether my fee
   looks low, normal or high.
5. Suggest one question to ask my dentist about it.
If any abbreviation is unclear, say so rather than guessing.

[paste plan lines here]

The last instruction matters most. Without it, these tools tend to guess what a practice’s own shorthand means and sound confident about it.

Where AI tools get dental shorthand wrong

AI tools reliably make a handful of mistakes with this shorthand, so check these yourself:

• Mixing up Palmer and FDI. An AI may read “36” as a quantity, or take LR6 and 46 to be different teeth. Ask it to confirm the tooth in words.
• Left and right from the wrong side. Some answers describe the tooth from the dentist’s side. It’s your right.
• American terms. US-trained models sometimes say “#19” (US Universal numbering) or quote dollar prices turned into pounds. Neither matches UK practice.
• Outdated NHS charges. Models trained before April 2025 often give £26.80, £73.50 and £319.10, which were the 2024 figures.
• Treating the BPE as a diagnosis. A 3 doesn’t mean you’ll lose teeth.
• Price ranges with no location. AI ranges don’t take your region into account. Compare them against two or three practices near you, since most UK practices publish a fee list on their website.

If any line still doesn’t make sense after that, phone the practice and ask what it stands for. Reception staff get asked this all the time, and the General Dental Council expects dentists to give you a written plan with costs that you can understand before you agree to treatment. If the answer you get still doesn’t explain the price, it’s reasonable to take the same decoded plan to another practice for a second quote.