A Great Debate

05 March 2018
Volume 31 · Issue 6

The Great Clinical Paper Debate from BioHorizons and CAMLOG certainly lived up to its name. Six high profile industry experts faced off in a series of three fascinating debates on February 16 at The Royal College of Physicians in London, to an audience of about 100 dental professionals from across the United Kingdom, Ireland, and beyond. 

With implant dentist, Stephen Jacobs keeping order throughout the day and managing questions from the floor, the first of the day’s debates, ‘Allograft vs. Xenograft: the natural choice, between Anthony Summerwill and Rob Oretti, dealt with how to choose between the two grafting materials. Dentists came away with valuable tips to help guide them towards the most appropriate material for a case while witnessing a very heated debate and Q&A session, expertly hosted by Stephen.

Next up, Adam Nulty and David Murnaghan debated ‘Digital vs Analogue: the future of implant dentistry’, looking at the current technological state of dentistry and questioning if there was indeed a digital replacement for the human touch. While David presented his cases, and his approach and techniques throughout, Adam advised whether he felt each case could have been ‘bettered’ with a more digital approach. The room agreed, with Stephen Jacob’s support, that the digital move was happening in dentistry whether we ‘liked it or not’, but that it was up to the individual how far that was extended in practice. This debate concluded that, while digital was proving a beneficial tool in practice, there was often no replacement for a clinician’s handy work.

The final debate, ‘Hard tissue vs. soft tissue: the response to surface technology’ was handled by Marcus Breschnidt and Jack Ricci, who discussed the benefits of hard versus soft tissue in creating primary stability with implants, and examined how each responds to the implant. Again, this was hotly debated, where both parties took opposing stances on cases presented but provided engaging presentations to an inspired room.

The Great Clinical Paper Debate provided the perfect platform for BioHorizons to launch the latest CAMLOG implant system in the UK and Ireland. iSy offers a complete, fully streamlined implant system with high primary stability, one-click fitting and the capability to provide fully digitised restorations. In his one-hour lecture, ‘Making implant dentistry iSy’, speaker Carlos Repullo explained that the iSy surgical and prosthetic workflow gives practices the chance to be more effective and efficient.

Finally, the surprise guest speaker, Jamil Qureshi, a renowned performance coach and psychologist, finished off the day by delivering a humorous and insightful talk on how to fulfil potential through change and performance management. Motivating the delegates in practice life, Qureshi demonstrated how you are only as strong as your network and how to approach practice life with renewed vigour and the motivation to change (should you be willing to!).

Talking about the Great Clinical Paper Debate Symposium Pretam Gharat said, “Excellent material and the speakers were excellent with a great amount of knowledge." Dr Brewer said that it was “a really well run and enjoyable course. I didn't expect to enjoy debating as much as I did!" Dr Ioan Rees concluded that the Allograft vs Xenograft debate was “one of the most useful talks I have been to and very clinically relevant”.

As part of Henry Schein, Inc., BioHorizons offers an extensive ECPD educational programme throughout the year for the whole dental team. The next symposia will be the Oral Reconstruction Global Symposium 2018 (former International Camlog Congress) in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, from April 26-28, 2018, sponsored by BioHorizons, followed by the BioHorizons Global Education Tour 2018.  This tour kicks off in Croatia in May, visiting Chile, Italy, Colombia and India over the next few months before signing off in Spain in October.    

For more information on dental education events from BioHorizons, please visit www.theimplanthub.com/education.