Spain: Launch of report on smoking cessation and oral health

The Spanish Society of Periodontology and Osseointegration (SEPA) marked European Gum Health Day 2018 with the launch of the report Tobacco cessation and oral health, prepared by a working group involving SEPA and the National Committee for the Prevention of Tobacco Use (CNPT).

The 48-page report, presented at the Casa de las Encías (the SEPA Gum Health Centre) in Madrid on May 10, combines technical aspects aimed at professionals and practical features focused especially on patients. It offers guidance on how tobacco use can be tackled within the dental practice and various strategies and simplified protocols that can help patients who want to give up smoking.

“Tobacco affects practically the whole organism but it enters the human body through the mouth and it is there that the first problems that it causes are manifested,” highlighted SEPA president Adrián Guerrero. “Apart from oral cancer, the main problems are caused at the periodontal level, so the idea of creating this report was both excellent and very logical.”

Francisco Rodríguez Lozano, president of the European Network for Smoking and Tobacco Prevention (ENSP) added that “dentists are in an exceptional position to transmit health messages, because the whole population visits (or should visit) their clinics. Today there is a very extensive network of dental clinics in Spain, including in places where there are no health centres.”

For Regina Dalmau, CNPT president, “This report is a call to attention for all health professionals about the responsibility that we share in preventing and treating tobacco use.”

Also taking part in the launch were Regina Izquierdo, spokesperson for the SEPA board and co-ordinator of the SEPA-CNPT working group, and working-group members Bettina Alonso and Cristina Vallès. The event was chaired by Gerardo Gómez-Moreno, professor of dentistry at the University of Granada.

The event has captured a wide range of media coverage both in specialist dental and medical press and in generalist media, including national television channels.

On May 25, SEPA will hold another event on this subject: the European Symposium: Tackling tobacco use in the dental clinic, at the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Santiago de Compostela.