EAO 11th annual scientific meeting exceeds expectations

Brussels September 11–14, 2002

In step with the growing popularity ofevidence based medicine movement, thepharmaceutical industry is incorporat-ing bibliographical references in drug ad-vertisements more frequently than pre-viously. In a recent paper. Villanueva etal. (1) have assessed drugs advertise-ments published in six medical journalsduring a one-year period that had at leastone bibliographical reference. Forty fourpercent of the adverts referenced scien-tific papers that did not infer scientificinformation about the drug advertised.The most common case scenario wasthat the pharmaceutical company rec-ommended a drug for one group. of pa-tients and the scientific reference refersto another group. of patients. It is fre-quent to find a scientific essay. on highrisk patients being used to recommend adrug for administration. on the generalpopulation. The opposite situation oc-curred when drugs were advertised for avery particular group. of patients (i. e.diabetics, elderly. persons, etc.) using ref-erences that clearly excluded thesetypes. of patients from the study. In an-other case the scientific reference wasdrawn from animal studies. In othercases the reference simply did not holdrelation with the drug advertised. Rob-ert. Fletcher of the Harvard MedicalSchool, points out on a side commentaryabout this article that many physiciansstate that drug advertisement do not af-fect their decision when prescribing adrug, but the question is; ‘Why do phar-maceutical companies invest millions ofdollars on drug advertisement? Our de-manding professions require long hours

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of clinical work and it is difficult tomaintain enough daily motivation tochoose our scientific library instead ofenjoying a much deserved rest with ourfamilies and/or friends. We would like tocongratulate and thank the scientific vi-sion of the members of the EAO 2002Program Committee, Chaired by D. vanSteenberghe, S. Jovanovic, I. Naert, F.W.Neukam, M. Quirynen (president), F. Re-nouard and G. Watzek for their soundjudgment in the selection of the congresstheme: ‘Recent Improvements in Osseo-integration: are they evidence-based?’ Itlet us enjoy an excellent scientific pro-gram that ambitiously embraced supple-mentary subjects such as: Improvementsin implant configuration and surface;surgical and prosthetic techniques, andnot forgetting the esthetic aspects, thetrue motor for the development of newtechniques in oral rehabilitation.It is interesting to remark that the devel-opment of procedures designed to helpus obtain, a many times unattainable,

Fig. 1. Prof Marc Quirynen, Responsible for theCongress.

aesthetic perfection on oral implants.This fact does bring us dangerously closeto a field dominated by ‘shades of grey’called over-treatment, because thethreshold that separates the necessaryfrom the superfluous action has not beenclearly defined. According to Prof MarcQuirynen, President EAO meeting 2002,the aim of the meeting was to share viastate of the art papers concerning ‘sig-nificant’ improvements/changes withindifferent scopes of osseointegration. Weall felt that the EAO annual meeting2002 fully accomplished the expec-tations of those attending clarifying onthe question whether these new tenden-cies or changes really do improve the fi-nal outcome of the therapy, especiallyfrom the patients’ point of view andwhether they are of clinical relevance.The number of the abstracts submitted

Fig. 2. Dr Ume Wikesjö was awarded for the bestoral presentation:’ rhBMP-2/aBSM induces sig-nificant vertical alveolar ridge augmentation anddental implant osseointegration’ and Dr MGross for the Best poster presentation: ‘Myth andreality of implant surface enhancement compara-tive analysis of available implant surfaces’.

EAO 11th annual scientific meeting

was impressive: 127. Prof Ignace Naert,president of the Abstract Committee,did an exhausting job. Based on writtenguidelines for the referee process the ab-stracts were either ‘accepted’ (with atleast 2 of the referees in favour) or ‘re-fused’. The overall acceptance rate was91.3%.As pointed out by Prof Massimo Simion,President of the EAO, one of the uniquefeatures of the EAO is its independencetowards industry. Industry is a strongpartner especially through gold sponsor-ship, but has no influence on the pro-gram or the names of invited speakers.This is why the scientific program wasclearly separated from the gold sponsorcourses on Friday afternoon, althoughsome did not realize it. We understandthat the industry lives out of productsales and needs to attract/interest peoplein their products. However, we believethat special care should be taken to mod-

249 | Clin. Oral Impl. Res. 14, 2003 / 248–249

erate the way people are enticed. An ex-cess in spectacle/show formats, as it wasnoted in some industry courses, couldconvert any meeting into a commercialevent. Yet, we stand as witnesses of thegreat success accomplished by thecourses offered on Friday afternoon,where research projects and the state ofthe art of every gold sponsor compo-nents were introduced.The splendid social and scientific pro-gram attracted more than 1500 partici-pants, exceeding even the most optimis-tic of expectations. We as attendantstruly appreciate all the commodities aswell as the proximity of the hotels to thecongress facilities. The massive responseand the perfect organization and man-agement of resources, qualifies the EAO11th annual scientific meeting as a suc-cess both in the academic as well as inthe economic aspect. After Prof MarcQuirynen’s, magnificent legacy, we are

sure Prof Georges Watzek’s endeavour asappointed President of EAO meeting2003 in Vienna, will be up to all the ex-pectations that EAO meetings tradition-ally evoke. On behalf of the EAO Coun-cil and Board I would like to send outour deepest gratitude to all the attendeesfor their much-appreciated support andcordially invite all of you to our nextmeeting.

See you in Vienna October 2003,Carlos Aparicio

Reference

Villanueva, P, Peiro, S, Librero, J, Pereiro,I (2003) Accuracy of pharmaceutical ad-vertisements in medical journals. Lan-cet 361: 27–32.