EFP’s new Prevention Workshop website offers video presentations from Sanz and Tonetti

The EFP's new website devoted to the ground-breaking EFP Prevention Workshop, prevention.efp.org, features brief video presentations from two of the chairmen of the working groups which drew up earlier this year far-reaching guidelines on preventing periodontal disease.

Visitors to the new website can now view a video interview with Mariano Sanz, chairman of the XI European Workshop in Periodontology held late last year and of its working group 4 (complications of gingival and periodontal diseases and professional mechanical plaque control), as well as another interview with Maurizio Tonetti, editor of the Journal of Clinical Periodontology, who chaired the Workshop's working group 1 (principles of prevention in periodontal diseases).

The main message of Sanz’s video ‘These diseases can be prevented very easily’ is that the periodontal professionals must provide customised measures to individual patients according to their specific needs.

“From the public health point of view, the key is probably secondary prevention of periodontitis, but from the patient’s personal point of view, things like traumatic tooth-brushing, halitosis, or dental hypersensitivity are very important issues that affect their daily life,” says Prof. Sanz. “So providing good advice and important evidence on the efficacy of specific agents is important not only for the dental community but also for the public.”

He says that while the main message is that periodontitis is a chronic disease that is caused by bacteria, it is also modulated by the host. Therefore, in order for prevention to be effective, “we need to study the host and provide customised measures.”

In ‘Goal setting, planning, and self-monitoring – the keys to behavioural change as a means of prevention’, Tonetti calls for the adoption of a “GPS” system – goal setting, planning, and self-monitoring – to improve success with professional mechanical plaque removal in both primary and secondary prevention of periodontal disease.

He says that the Workshop’s conclusions will be “of fundamental importance in re-orienting clinicians – dental hygienists, dentists, periodontists, the whole profession – in making sure that we do things in a different way.” Prof. Tonetti argues that professional mechanical plaque removal should not be done “blindly” but should form part of a strategy where patients are also given clear instructions on oral hygiene and routines.

This prevention.efp.org website was given its official launch at a recent summer course on periodontal health held by the Complutense University of Madrid, at which both Mariano Sanz and EFP president Sören Jepsen, who chaired working group 3 on primary prevention of peri-implantitis and management of peri-implant mucositis, gave well-received lectures.

The new website, which is sponsored by Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble, will continue to be expanded over the coming weeks with additional content related to the XI European Workshop in Periodontology.

The EFP Prevention Workshop took place in November 2014 in La Granja (Spain). Its focus was the prevention of periodontal and peri-implant diseases and more than 75 top-level participants – international experts in oral-health science, research, protocols and products – systematically reviewed recent studies to produce conclusions relevant to professionals in the dental and medical communities.