Editorial: Treatment for the Older Person. Minimum Standards or Minimal Care

A provocative and challenging title for a clinical academic meeting and one that reflects how far we have moved since the McGill Consensus statement in 2002. It was the title for the British Prosthodontic Conference Annual November meeting this year and was hosted (perhaps equally provocatively) at the Royal Zoological Society, London Zoo! Having a vested interest in the subject (and being one of the speakers) I was greatly heartened by the turnout and the level of participation of the delegates throughout the day. It seems only a short while ago that such a meeting would only have attracted those whose major interest was in the dental management of older people with perhaps some polite interest from those outside this field; but how things have changed! Not because the profession is aging (surely not?) but perhaps we are all maturing and have come to recognise that, as the first speaker said, “age is not a disease” and there are things that can be done to change not only the expectation but also the reality of what increasing years can bring.