Friday at EuroPerio9: new classification, live surgery, and treatment planning

The third day of EuroPerio9 offers not only innovative sessions – live surgery for the first time at the EFP’s triennial congress and an interactive session on treatment planning – but also the long-awaited official presentation of the new classification of periodontal and peri-implant diseases and conditions.

News from the World Workshop on Classification (08.30-12.00) will be introduced by session chairs Kenneth Kornman (USA) and Maurizio Tonetti (Hong Kong), respectively editors of the Journal of Periodontology and the Journal of Clinical Periodontology, the official scientific publications of the American Academy of Periodontology (AAP) and the EFP.

The session will present the consensus reports (now published online by both journals) from the AAP/EFP World Workshop on the Classification of Periodontal Diseases and Conditions, held in Chicago in November 2017.

Since the previous classification, in 1999, new evidence and new understandings of these diseases has emerged, and the use of dental implants has expanded, bringing with it the new problem of peri-implant diseases and conditions.

This double session will discuss the rationale for the classification change and provide the vision of how such changes can be incorporated into clinical practice to have a positive impact on the care of patients.

After the introduction, the findings of each of the workshop’s four working groups will be presented by their co-chairs:

• Iain Chapple (UK) will present the report of working group 1 on defining gingival health and disease. Among the results are that plaque-induced gingivitis is best defined objectively by the presence of bleeding on gentle probing to the sulcus base; the extent of disease can be defined as localised or generalised, but a limited number of bleeding sites may still be consistent with a case definition of clinical gingival health; and a successfully treated periodontitis patient remains a periodontitis patient for life but may present with gingival health or gingival inflammation.
• Mariano Sanz (Spain) and Panos Papapanou (USA) will present the report from working group 2, which considered the definition of periodontitis. They will present the workshop’s consensus for replacing the current classification of “chronic” and “aggressive” periodontitis with one based on four stages and three grades.
• Søren Jepsen (Germany) will present the findings of working group 3 on developmental and acquired conditions and periodontal manifestations of systemic diseases. This presentation will cover periodontal manifestations of systemic diseases and conditions, mucogingival conditions, occlusal trauma and traumatic occlusal forces, and prosthesis- and tooth-related factors.
• Tord Berglundh (Sweden) will present the report from working group 4, on peri-implant diseases and conditions, which were absent from the 1999 classification. The consensus report offers definitions of: peri-implant health, peri-implant mucositis, peri-implantitis, and hard- and soft-tissue deficiencies.

“EuroPerio9 offers a perfect opportunity to present the new classification to the global dental world,” said Søren Jepsen, scientific chair of EuroPerio9.

The latest issue of the EFP magazine Perio Insight, published at the start of EuroPerio9, is devoted to the new classification, with articles from professors Chapple, Sanz, Jepsen, and Berglundh.

Innovative sessions

In the afternoon, there are the innovative sessions involving live surgery and treatment planning.

Live surgery (14.30-16.00): in a session moderated by Massimo de Sanctis (Italy), live periodontal and peri-implant surgery will be performed by Giovanni Zucchelli (Italy) and Martina Stefanini (Italy) at the ACTA dental school and transmitted in real time to the audience at RAI Amsterdam.

In the Treatment planning session (16.30-18.00), part of the master clinician/periodontal specialist forum, complex treatment-planning scenarios will be introduced by Christoph Hämmerle (Switzerland) and David Nisand (France). After a case presentation from Daniel Thoma (Switzerland), possible treatment decisions and solutions will then be discussed by an interdisciplinary team of experts: Andreas Stavropoulos (Sweden), Bjarni Pjetursson (Iceland), Darko Bozic (Croatia), Gernot Wimmer (Austria), Gerry Raghoebar (Netherlands), and Rudolf Fürhauser (Austria). The audience will be able to vote on the options presented and the votes will be revealed at the end of the session.

Another highlight of Day Three of EuroPerio9 will be the presentations for the EFP Research Prize competition (12.30-14.00). The three finalists will give oral presentations of 20 minutes, followed by 10-minute discussions, before the jury makes its final decision. After a record number of 19 entries, the jury selected three research papers (lead author in bold type) as prize finalists:

• The guardians of the periodontium – sequential and differential expression
  of antimicrobial peptides during gingival inflammation. Results from in
  vivo and in vitro studies, by Henrik Dommisch, Philipp Skora, Josefine Hirschfeld, Gabriela Olg, Laura Hildebrandt, and Søren Jepsen.
• Predicting chronic periodontitis using cardiometabolic risk measures, by Eduardo Montero, David Herrera, Mariano Sanz, Sangeeta Dhir, Thomas Van Dyke, and Corneliu Sima.
• Time between recall visits and residual probing depths predict long-term
  stability in patients enrolled in supportive periodontal therapy, by Christoph A. Ramseier, Martina Nydegger, Clemens Walter, Gabriel Fischer, Anton Sculean, Niklaus P. Lang, and Giovanni E. Salvi.

The winner of the EFP Research Prize will be announced during the congress’s closing ceremony on Saturday 23.

Photo contest

In the EFP Village, the winners of the 1^st EFP Photo Competition will be announced at 16.00.

All EuroPerio9 participants can use the EuroPerio9 App to vote for their preferred photograph in each of the competition’s three categories: dental disease, healthy gums, and extreme/freestyle.

All 57 photographs in the competition have been published on the EFP’s Instagram page and can also be seen in high-resolution format in the “Photo Zone” between the EFP Village and the poster area.

The three winners chosen by voting, plus the overall winner that has been selected by an expert jury, will be revealed at this session.