Drs. Garcia and Dietrich Present at International Periodontology Symposium

Drs. Raul Garcia, professor and chair of the Department of Health Policy and Health Services Research, and Thomas Dietrich, visiting research scholar, will speak at Current Controversies in Periodontology, an international periodontology symposium in Berlin December 9, 2006.

Dietrich, who is one of five co-organizers of the symposium, will speak on the topic "Case selection—discriminating therapeutic successes from failures or discriminating patients?”

"Several host-factors have been identified that determine the risk for periodontitis as well as the probability of treatment success or failure," says Dietrich. "Some scholars advocate case selection based on the presence or absence of such factors. I believe that such recommendations are based on an ‘illusion of certainty’, i.e., the value of population risk factors in making predictions for individual patients is grossly overestimated. My presentation will deal with how to make sensible use of new knowledge on risk factors in clinical decision making."

Garcia will present “Does biofilm control really matter—possibly not?”

Dietrich is planning the event to honor his former supervisor and chair of a peridontology research training group in Germany, Professor Jean-Pierre Bernimoulin. The symposium, which is co-sponsored by the German Society of Periodontology, will honor three professors of periodontology who retired this past year.

The symposium’s proceedings will be published in the European journal PERIO.