EuroPerio10 begins today with global focus, keynote speech on sustainability, and opening ceremony

The long wait is finally over. EuroPerio10 opens its doors today – Wednesday, 15 June – to more than 7,000 participants from over 100 countries.

Delayed by a year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the EFP’s tenth EuroPerio congress will be a four-day celebration of scientific and clinical excellence in periodontology and implant dentistry.

The opening ceremony at Copenhagen’s Bella Center, with its traditional procession of flags representing the EFP’s 37 member societies, takes place at 17.00 (CET) in the plenary hall, featuring a keynote speech about sustainability from Katherine Richardson Christensen (pictured), who chaired the Danish commission on climate-change policy and is professor of biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen and leader of the university’s Sustainability Science Centre.

But there is plenty of action even before the national flags are unfurled, starting at 12 noon with a press presentation, featuring EFP president Andreas Stavropoulos and members of the EuroPerio10 organising committee – Phoebus Madianos (chair), David Herrera (scientific chair), and Nicola West (treasurer) – screened live on the EFP's YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram channels.

At 13.30 the scientific programme begins, with eight sessions scheduled in two halls and two auditoria. Highlights include:

• Two symposia on periodontal and implant therapy around the world organised with the federation’s international associate members, including speakers from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Lebanon, and Taiwan.
• The session Periodontology and the Covid-19 pandemic – what have we learnt?, which will explore the role of saliva in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the role of aerosol transmission and its impact in dentistry, and whether oral-health professionals are more likely to be exposed to Covid-19.
• The EFP Alumni session, featuring the lecture “Marketing management: understanding the patients” by marketing expert Carlo Gallucci, followed by the EFP Alumni assembly which will elect a new board.
• In the second largest auditorium (with a capacity for more than 2,000 people), two sessions with presentations based on clinical videos, the first focusing on treatment decisions for staged bone regeneration in the anterior maxilla, and the second on the critical factors in the surgical treatment of gingival recession in lower anterior teeth.
• In parallel, two sessions will explore advances and challenges in non-surgical therapy, both in the treatment of periodontitis and the treatment of peri-implant diseases.

In the smaller “break-out” rooms, there will be sponsor workshops plus the Joint EFP/Osteology Foundation session, with presentations on recession coverage, wound healing after surgery, and soft-tissue management in aesthetic defects around implants.

And the first poster discussions will take place in the poster lounge. Over the course of EuroPerio10, there will be 200 poster discussions, along with 120 abstracts presented as oral communications or videos, and 592 abstracts presented as posters in the poster lounge.

"The general session of EuroPerio10 starts on Wednesday, with eight very attractive sessions, covering different topics and already aiming to be attended by very distinct profiles of attendees (clinicians, specialists, academics, dental hygienist…)," said David Herrera, EuroPerio10 scientific chair. "But the opening ceremony should not be missed: as EuroPerio10 chair Phoebus Madianos declared, 'the opening ceremony is always very special in EuroPerio congresses – but this time it will be even more special and full of surprises.'"