Introduction: Oral health is essential for psychosocial well-being and general health. For expectant mothers, pregnancy increases the risk of oral diseases and has a subsequent impact on the oral health of a child once born. Midwives are in charge of pregnancy monitoring, childbirth and...

The postmortem identification of people without an identity is performed either by using DNA, dental charts, or fingerprints (until advanced decomposition prevents their study). The lack of forensic dentists who can conduct identifications lead us to reflect on the use of digital technology in this area. The aim of this study was to validate the organizational capacity of using teledentistry for the identification of bodies in a forensic medicine department. A mixed observational study was conducted on 55 cases between July 2020 and February 2021 in the Forensic Medicine and Thanatology Department of Montpellier University Hospital. The protocol was structured in five steps: an initial interview with the agent (a forensic autopsy technician/caregiver specialized in forensic medicine), regarding the idea they had in terms of using telemedicine in their daily practice; agent training in the telemedicine system; realization of a clinical examination using an intra-oral camera by the agent; data analysis by a dental surgeon; final interview with the agent. The study was conducted on 55 subjects. The average age was 54 years old, with more than two-thirds of the patients being male (69%). The videos had an average duration of 29 min. There was an increase in visit duration when rigidity was high; this was also the case when there were many dental specificities in the oral cavity. The quality of the videos was either good or excellent. This study showed that remote identification could be considered as a new non-invasive identification tool. Many features were analyzed to create a training guide for forensic institutes.

Forensic odontology is a key discipline in post-mortem human identification. In France, the absence of a centralized dental registry complicates the use of dental records for this purpose. Since 2016, nationwide "identification alerts" have circulated by email to dentists, asking them to check for possible matches in their patient files. This study focuses on the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of French dentists regarding panoramic radiography, dental record-keeping, and their interaction with forensic identification alerts. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted between December 2023 and December 2024. A total of 419 dentists completed the nationwide questionnaire using the KAP (Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices) framework. Of the respondents, 94% had graduated from French dental school and 74% practised exclusively in the private sector. More than half of respondents reported prescribing panoramic radiographs in the event of pathology, while one-third used them routinely every one to two years. Forty percent of respondents indicated that they had received no initial training in forensic dentistry or record-keeping. Dentists who graduated after 2014 were more likely to have received such supplraining (p < 0.001), yet they were paradoxically less likely to respond to identification alerts (p < 0.001). The findings highlight a gap between technical capacity, training, and practical forensic engagement. In order to enhance the role of dentists in forensic identification, systemic measures are required, including standardised record keeping, the integration of forensic functionalities into dental software, national policy support, and targeted awareness campaigns.