EFP launches awareness programme on caries and gum disease

The EFP has launched an ambitious awareness programme about the relationship between dental caries and periodontal disease – the most common non-communicable diseases in humans and the leading causes of tooth loss.

The Perio & Caries project is based on the outcomes of Perio Workshop 2016, which focused in depth on “the boundaries between dental caries and periodontal disease”, reviewing all available evidence on interactions, common risk factors, and shared patterns between tooth decay and gum disease.

The aim of this new project is to disseminate the main conclusions of the workshop to five groups of people: dentists, other health professionals, researchers, policymakers, and the public.

The core element of the Perio & Caries project is a new website – perioandcaries.efp.org – which contains a wealth of material that can be downloaded, including:

• Five brochures, with specific recommendations for each of the project’s various audiences, to help prevent and tackle both caries and gum disease.
• One scientific report, Relationship between caries and gum disease, which is based on the Perio Workshop 2016 consensus reports, which are also available at the Perio & Caries site.
• Video interviews with the experts involved in the workshop.
• An infographic which explains the issues in a clear and scientifically rigorously way.

Perio Workshop 2016, held at La Granja de San Ildefonso in Spain, brought together 75 leading periodontists and cariologists from around the world. It was organised by the EFP in partnership with ORCA (the European Organisation for Caries Research).

This workshop was the first major scientific attempt in the world to consider dental caries and periodontal disease not as separate entities, but as interrelated process that can share genetic, aetiological, social, and environmental determinants – although they follow different trajectories and usually emerge at different ages.

The scientific outcomes of Perio Workshop 2016 are publicly available in a special open-access supplement of the EFP’s Journal of Clinical Periodontology.

“These disease processes have been historically analysed under very different optics and the cultures of analysing the scientific evidence by the cariologists and the periodontists were clearly well apart,” said Mariano Sanz, chair of the EFP’s Workshop committee. “This workshop has allowed us to identify the areas of convergence between these diseases and also the aspects in prevention and therapy that are key to both disease processes.” 

Both Perio Workshop 2016 and the Perio & Caries project have received financial support from Colgate, one of the world’s leading brands in oral care. The EFP thanks Colgate for its support and its unrestricted grant for the Perio & Caries project.