Minimal intervention prosthodontics: current knowledge and societal implications.

Minimal intervention prosthodontics can be considered a treatment option for a country's overall dental health care plan. Prosthodontics can cover a range of increasingly aggressive treatment interventions depending on the severity and progression of the disease. The 'shortened dental arch' concept is a minimal treatment intervention approach that has been advocated for a wide range of partially edentulous patients. This concept favors limited prosthodontic intervention to achieve patient-perceived acceptable function levels in the presence of multiple missing teeth. The implementation of minimal interventions should be balanced by considering risk-to-benefit ratios, as well as the consequences of nonintervention of low-level prosthodontic interventions. The 'nonintervention' approach and low-level prosthodontic interventions have inherent consequences and well-documented risks; professional ethics dictate that a practitioner present these risks as well as the known benefits of all treatment options. Developing countries are under significant pressure to effectively utilize limited resources, increase skilled human resources, provide advanced levels of care to very large numbers of patients and plan for the future dental health care of their society. Many developing countries are prime candidates for inadvertent abuse and misappropriation of prosthodontic materials, treatment modalities and human resources in trying to provide cost-effective prosthodontic care. A developing country can learn from the mistakes that developed countries have made in the past and use the evidence from these experiences to plan for a better future state of dental health for their society.