Dental News - Clinicians discuss their nightmare cases at EuroPerio10

Brendan Day, Dental Tribune International

Wed. 15. June 2022

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark: Typically, dental congresses provide an ideal platform for speakers to present and discuss some of their most notable achievements in clinical practice. Though these cases will be abundant at EuroPerio10, one of the most intriguing elements of the event’s scientific programme will be the two “nightmare sessions”, in which experienced practitioners will detail treatments that failed to go according to plan—and how they reacted to these situations.

On Thursday, 16 June, from 2:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., Dr Adriàn Guerrero will chair a discussion titled “Nightmare session—dental implants”. Prof. Øystein Fardal, Dr Tiernan O’Brien and Dr Luca Landi will reveal some of the cases that, for one reason or another, had an outcome vastly different from what was expected. Dr O’Brien, for example, will focus on two specific cases that, in his words, “turned into nightmares for me and my patient”. In the first case, a mistake at the beginning of treatment created a problem that continues to persist for the patient 17 years later. In the second case, evidence-based treatment was provided in the correct way but, nonetheless, did not work and ended up giving the patient a compromised final result.

“The nightmare session is really there to act as a counterbalance to all the other talks that will focus on the very positive results that can be achieved in contemporary periodontal practice,” said Dr O’Brien.

“Our session is to remind people that not everything works out as planned in every case. In fact, we have been asked not just to present cases that have not been successful, but cases that went very wrong and turned into a nightmare in one way or another,” he added.

The perils of periodontology

EFP past president Prof. Lior Shapira. (Image: EFP)

On Friday, 17 June, from 2:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., EFP past president Prof. Lior Shapira will chair the event “Nightmare session—periodontal therapy”, and Prof. Moshe Goldstein, Dr Pierpaolo Cortellini and Dr Giulio Rasperini have all gamely opted to participate and share some of the mistakes they have witnessed in the course of their careers.

In the session, Dr Cortellini will discuss managing complications in regenerative therapy and how certain treatment strategies and techniques have been modified to achieve more predictable results. He will analyse surgeries that were not conducted correctly, the compromised outcomes that resulted and the possible solutions for these cases. These will be compared with cases in which regenerative therapy was performed without error.

Prof. Goldstein will elaborate on the potential complications and technique-sensitive nature of mucogingival surgery while providing several case studies to illustrate what exactly can go wrong when conducting this kind of treatment. Dr Rasperini, meanwhile, will clarify what, exactly, papilla reconstruction entails. As one of the inventors of this treatment modality, he is ideally positioned to explain the reasons behind papilla loss and explore the mistakes made in certain cases where this occurred.

According to Prof. Shapira, this second session “aims to show that expert periodontists and key opinion leaders may have problems during the healing following periodontal surgery”.

He added: “The biological and technical reasons for the failure need to be analysed, understood, and lead to modifications in the techniques. We can all benefit from the learning process and need to follow the words of Albert Einstein: ‘The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no new ideas.’”

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