Sir, I was very amused to read Stephen Hancocks' editorial titled Beware the irony of the humble full-full (BDJ 2010; 208: 327). As amusing as it was, it raises a few interesting points. Firstly, the demographic wave of the baby boomer generation and the fact that generally more people are living longer than ever before. Secondly, mastication is the first part of the digestive process and without the ability to chew food, digestion is compromised, diet is compromised, general health and wellbeing is compromised, life expectancy is compromised. Apart from that we also have communication problems, not only between those that can hear, but even bigger problems for those that have partial hearing or lip read. We could then go on to discuss the social and emotional problems associated with the loss of teeth. When you start to consider all of the above issues, the humble full-full or humble partial denture, fabricated and fitted by a humble clinical dental technician (CDT) is not so humble after all.

Technicians are aware of the current limitations in their scope of practice and will also be very aware of the fact that full-full denture clients will represent a decreasing proportion of denture wearers in the future. The role and scope of practice for CDTs must broaden and evolve quickly otherwise, as the editorial suggests, it would be ironic.