EFP and World Heart Federation prepare workshop on periodontitis and cardiovascular diseases

Preparations are being finalised for next month’s Perio & Cardio Workshop, which will explore the links between periodontal disease and cardiovascular diseases and draw up a series of recommendations.

The workshop will take place in Madrid on February 18 and 19, organised jointly by the EFP and the World Heart Federation (WHF), in partnership with Dentaid.

The workshop will bring together 21 experts from the two organisations, who will review scientific papers and produce consensus reports, which will be published in the EFP’s Journal Clinical Periodontology.

The federation’s communications team will then develop an outreach project, also sponsored by Dentaid, that will disseminate the key information from this workshop among various groups: oral-healthcare professionals, physicians, pharmacists, researchers, media, patients, and the public.

This would thus be the fourth EFP project, following those on Oral Health & Pregnancy, Perio & Caries, and Perio & Diabetes.

Four questions, two working groups

Like the 2017 Perio & Diabetes Workshop, the Perio & Caries Workshop will look to build on the groundbreaking work of the EFP’s IX European Workshop on Periodontology, held in 2012, which explored the links between periodontitis and systemic conditions including cardiovascular diseases.

Participants in the Perio & Cardio Workshop will work in two working groups, each considering two areas.

Working group 1, chaired by Mariano Sanz (EFP) and José Ramón González Juanatey (WHF), will consider:

• The epidemiological evidence of the links between periodontitis and cardiovascular diseases;
• The biological mechanisms of the increased risk of developing atherosclerosis lesions in patients with periodontitis.

Working group 2, chaired by Søren Jepsen (EFP) and Francisco Fernández-Avilés (WHF), will explore:

• The effect of intervention trials on atherosclerosis risk parameters;
• The potential cardiovascular risks of oral interventions.

“It is more and more evident that periodontal health is a prerequisite for systemic health and that we should therefore communicate – to health professionals and to the population at large – about the importance of prevention and early treatment of periodontitis as an important step in the prevention of many systemic diseases,” said Prof Sanz, chair of the EFP workshop committee.

“The EFP is making an effort to develop clear, evidence-based recommendations on those diseases where periodontitis has clearly established epidemiological associations. Cardiovascular diseases are the main cause of death in the developed world and their prevention is critical in current societies.”

He added that the workshop would update knowledge on the links between periodontitis and cardiovascular diseases and develop recommendations “for their prevention, for pursuing further research in these associations, and for the management of patients with both periodontal and cardiovascular diseases.”