Live surgery, nightmares in dental implants, surgical therapy for peri-implantitis – highlights of Day 2 at EuroPerio10

The second day of EuroPerio10 promises extraordinary experiences, with 12 sessions in the general programme including two sessions with a clinical focus that are likely to be well-attended and thought-provoking.

First, there will be a live surgery session (09.00-12.00 CET) in which two leading surgeons tackle similar cases using different techniques of mucogingival surgery to cover multiple gingival recessions.

Ion Zabalegui (Spain) will demonstrate the tunnel technique and Massimo de Sanctis (Italy) will show how to perform the coronally advanced flap technique. The surgeries, screened live in the plenary hall, will run in parallel, performed by Dr Zabalegui in Bilbao and Dr de Sanctis in Milan and co-ordinated by session chair Otto Zuhr (Germany), who will moderate a debate about the advantages and disadvantages of each technique.

“This session will be unique and it is one of the highlights of the congress, due to the topic, the surgeons, the chair, and the challenging format," said Phoebus Madianos, EuroPerio10 chair.

The main highlight of the afternoon will be the first of two “nightmare” sessions in which clinicians talk about surgeries and procedures that did not go according to plan and how they handled the resulting problems.

Focusing on dental implants, the session (14.30-16.00), will be chaired by Adrián Guerrero (Spain) and will feature contributions from Øystein Fardal (Norway), Tiernan O’Brien (Ireland), and Luca Landi (Italy). It will cover serious complications in implant therapy, such as unintended adjacent tooth damage, early implant loss right after prosthetic load, multiple late failures, and the occurrence of severe peri-implantitis in theoretically well-maintained patients.

'World premiere'

Three sessions at EuroPerio10 will discuss recommendations of the EFP's clinical practice guidelines but, according to congress scientific chair David Herrera, “the session at 16.30 in Congress Hall A should not be missed, since it will present – as a world premiere – the clinical practice guideline for the treatment of periodontitis in stage IV, which was published only on June 10."

For true lovers of periodontal science, the sessions in Hall C4 in the afternoon will present the latest advances in aetiology and how to use that knowledge for the benefit of the patient (personalised medicine). And, in Auditorium 10-12, “understanding the patient” will be discussed by experts in marketing and branding.

Sessions in the other halls, auditoria, and break-out rooms on Thursday, June 16 include the presentations of the three finalists in the Jaccard-EFP Research Prize in Periodontology and the effective prevention of peri-implant diseases. There is also an opportunity for congress participants to meet Journal of Clinical Periodontology editor-in-chief Panos N. Papapanou and the journal’s associate editors.