Minimal intervention dentistry in the management of the paediatric patient

Minimal intervention dentistry (MID) is a philosophy of care that aims to conserve tooth tissues throughout a persons' life. This paper aims to review the literature on topics that are related to MID approaches for the management of dental caries and that can be applicable to the paediatric patient. Tools for caries diagnosis and early lesion detection are presented and discussed. More conservative and less invasive techniques for managing enamel and dentine carious lesions in primary and permanent teeth are compared to the traditional treatments. The traditional treatments are centred on the disease and on restoring its sequels, and have been shown to be insufficiently effective in controlling caries disease over time. In contrast, the MID philosophy has created potentially very suitable options for treating children that are considered more child-friendly, less anxiety provoking, preserve more tooth tissues and are equally good as the traditional treatments.