Periodontists and family doctors gather in focused workshop

An EFP workshop focused on periodontology and family doctors will take place in Madrid on July 10-11 with the objective of reaching a consensus on the latest evidence on associations between periodontitis and various systemic diseases (cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and respiratory diseases), and to come up with recommendations for family doctors and dentists.

The workshop is a collaboration between the EFP and the European branch of the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA Europe) and is sponsored by Curasept.

It will involve 18 experts from the two organisations and will be jointly chaired by David Herrera, chair of the EFP workshop committee, and Shlomo Vinker, president of WONCA Europe. In addition, six stakeholder representatives of the EFP and Curasept will participate in the discussions.

This workshop, sponsored by EFP partner Curasept, will involve three working groups.

• Working group 1, chaired by Mariano Sanz (EFP) and Carlos Brotons (WONCA Europe), will consider the evidence on the associations between periodontitis and cardiovascular diseases. It will update the current consensus from the Perio & Cardio Workshop, which was held by the EFP and the World Heart Federation in 2019, and whose findings were promoted through the Perio & Cardio campaign.
• Working group 2, chaired by Lior Shapira (EFP) and Josep Vilaseca (WONCA Europe), will explore the latest evidence on the associations between periodontitis and diabetes. It will update the consensus report from the 2017 Perio-Diabetes Workshop held by the EFP and International Diabetes Federation, whose work led to the Perio & Diabetes campaign.
• Working group 3, chaired by David Herrera (EFP) and Shlomo Vinker (WONCA Europe), will focus on reviewing the links between respiratory diseases and periodontitis. It will specifically focus on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), and Covid-19. The results of a new systematic review, especially prepared for the meeting, will be presented to provide the scientific basis for the discussions.

“After the successful focused workshops with the endocrinologists in 2017 and the cardiologists in 2019, it became clear that the next step was to involve the family doctors since, at the end of the day, most patients will be managed by them,” said David Herrera. “Thus, having the opportunity to discuss with them the implications of the association of periodontitis with different diseases – including non-communicable diseases – represents a huge step to improve overall health in the population.”

This collaboration between the EFP and WONCA Europe was initiated by Lior Shapira (EFP president 2021-22), who made collaboration with family doctors a priority for his year as the federation’s president.

“The EFP had worked with other medical professionals – such as diabetologists and cardiologists – to emphasise the connection between periodontal health and systemic conditions,” he noted. “But those experts see only severe and hard-to-treat patients and do not focus on milder cases or on prevention. The best target group for the EFP is family physicians, who see most patients and who have disease prevention as their primary target.”