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Systematic reviews have been recommended as providing the best source of evidence to guide clinical decisions and healthcare policy, and they receive more citations as non-systematic reviews in peer-reviewed journals. However, they are also very technical by nature and make difficult reading for the general dental practitioner. Often, the findings of a lengthy systematic review may be condensed into a very few sentences that provide all information necessary for daily clinical practice. To give such easily discernable information to clinicians is the purpose of plain language summaries. These summaries by itself do not replace the function and merits of full systematic review articles. However, they do ease the wider comprehension and dissemination of its key findings. It is the purpose of this evidence-based compendium to provide such summaries from published systematic reviews that the author has initiated over the years in the field of minimally invasive dentistry (MI). It lies in the scope of future compendium editions to further reflect the unfolding evidence-based knowledge in this exciting new field of oral health care.

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Dr Mickenautsch qualified as dentist in Germany and obtained his PhD from the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. In South Africa, he advises the MI research and training programme of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. His work focuses on the review, analysis of scientific evidence of Minimum Intervention (MI) in dentistry.

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