As a young dentist entering the working world I'm constantly feeling the pressure of keeping up to date and continually developing my skills. We are now in the age of implants, with full mouth rehabilitations becoming more and more common as well as a popular choice for restoring the adult dentition. We have all heard of the 'all of four' concept and implant retained dentures are quickly being accepted as gold standard for management of the lower edentulous ridge. 

As dental professionals, we need the necessary skills to manage the new demographics and our aging population, and with that comes the responsibility of managing more complicated patients, with compromised medical conditions. The Alzheimer's  Society report  Dementia UK: Update (2014) predicted there will be 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK by 2015, and this is set to rise as a result of an ageing population.  But what does this mean for us as young dentists. Typically it can be argued that implants need more frequent monitoring and management, so how will we deal with patients who have  full mouth rehabs, and then go on to develop severe dementia and are unable to maintain them? 

What we are facing today is very real, and we are not far away from having to deal with these problems on a regular basis. I can't help but wonder how the NHS services will cope with this, especially when patients start presenting to our special care colleagues or in dental practice with problems related to poor management of their restorations as a direct consequence of poor general health. The cases are already starting to present now, and with no implant knowledge at all I wouldn't know where to begin! Should we all be looking into basic implant training as a bare minimum for the future?