EFP has high profile at congress on oral-health research

There was a strong EFP presence at the Oral Health Research Congress held in Madrid last weekend, with presentations by various members of the federation’s executive committee.

The three-day event was organised by the Continental European Division of the International Association for Dental Research (CED-IADR), together with the Scandinavian Division (NOF). The congress president was David Herrera, chair-elect of the EFP’s workshop committee and scientific chair of EuroPerio10, which takes place in Copenhagen in June 2021.

EFP president Filippo Graziani gave a presentation on the regeneration of unconventional defects during a session on tissue regeneration in periodontology, endorsed by the Spanish Society of Periodontology and Osseointegration (SEPA). Mariano Sanz, chair of the workshop committee, also spoke in this session, addressing the question “What are the ideal bone grafts and membranes?”, and SEPA board member Andrés Pascual, discussed the role of active biomaterials.

Nicola West (EFP secretary general) and Phoebus Madianos (chair of the scientific affairs committee and chair of the EuroPerio10 organising committee) both spoke during a session on the association between oral and systemic diseases.

Prof West addressed the links between periodontitis and Alzheimer’s Disease, Prof Madianos spoke about the links with cardiovascular disease, while Bruno Loos, director of the EFP-accredited postgraduate programme at ACTA (Amsterdam, Netherlands) focused on diabetes. This session, part of the programme of SEPA’s Alianza por la Salud, was chaired by SEPA secretary general Paula Matesanz, an EFP junior officer who is one of the scientific advisers to the Perio & Cardio project, a forthcoming EFP outreach campaign, sponsored by Dentaid, which builds on the outcomes of the Perio & Cardio Workshop held by the EFP and the World Heart Federation in February this year (also in Madrid).

“More than 900 researchers from more than 50 countries joined together in Madrid for three days to discuss the latest advances in oral-health research,” said Prof Herrera. “To close these amazing three days, six symposia for clinicians – to demonstrate the transference from research to the clinic – were organised and the most relevant researchers shared their knowledge on different specialties, including periodontology.”

The Oral Health Research Congress, which took place from September 19 to 21, included 32 oral sessions with 212 presentations, 52 poster sessions with 327 posters, 13 symposia, four keynote lectures (including the Robert Frank lecture, featuring paleoanthropologist Prof José María Bermúdez de Castro, director of the Atapuerca excavations), three research workshops, four “meet a mentor” lunch sessions, and the six satellite symposia for clinicians.

CED-IADR’s mission is to promote high-quality oral-health research in Continental Europe by advancing research and increasing knowledge to improve oral health, supporting and representing the oral-health-research community, and facilitating the communication and application of research findings.