Erupted teeth in the newborn.

Various terminologies have been used in the dental and medical literature to describe teeth in the mouth of the new or recently born child. Terms such as precocious dentition or dentition praecox, foetal or congenital teeth and predeciduous dentition were used in the older literature. 1.2.3 The most widely accepted terms are natal or neonatal teeth. Massler and Savara 2 defined natal teeth as teeth which are present in the oral cavity of the infant at the time of birth while neonatal teeth refer to those cases which erupt during the neonatal period (from birth to 30 days). This division is based on time of eruption and not on anatomy, physiology, pathology, origin or symptom. However Spounge and Feasby 3 suggested that the term should be given real clinical significance by describing such structures as mature and immature natal or neonatal teeth. Mature natal or neonatal teeth implies that they are fully developed as compared with the remainder of the deciduous dentition and hence their prognosis is relatively good. Immature natal or neoriatal tooth describes an incomplete substandard structure and implies a