Sir, Dr Faggion raises a number of important issues regarding the reporting of clinical research findings at oral presentations, which deserve wide discussion.1 However, we are concerned that the reader may be left with the view that the content of major dental meetings is thus somehow tainted by the presence of industry sponsorship and by speakers' conflicts of interests. As organisers of what we anticipate will be the largest conference on periodontology and implant dentistry ever held in Europe - Europerio 8 London 2015 - we welcome the opportunity to comment on some of the points raised, particularly as related to Europerio, which is featured prominently in the article.

Firstly, as correction of fact, at Europerio 7 2012, all invited speakers received clear guidelines on their presentations that included a requirement for disclosure of any conflicts of interest and the avoidance of bias. These guidelines were not posted on the meeting website (and thus not visible to the author when carrying out his investigation). The guidelines referred to in the article were for 'Research Presentations', which were free papers selected for researchers to present individual research projects, as opposed to the invited speakers on the main scientific programme. Secondly, although many of the Europerio sponsors are entitled to organise their own symposia; these are clearly designated as such and kept completely separate from the main clinical and scientific programme, although their content is still validated and approved by the scientific committee. In contrast, no commercial sponsors directly support any of the presentations within the official scientific programme.

The proposed guidelines tend to assume that presentations take a common format where a question is posed and then subjected to an oral systematic review. Whilst it is recognised that this is one approach for an oral presentation of a topic, we believe that a narrative review approach with expression of personal opinions is also legitimate. A format where these opinions are discussed and tested by an active session chair and distinct speakers may be particularly appropriate for many topics and is a format we intend to adopt widely at Europerio 8. The 'narrative' oral presentation with expression of opinions is particularly relevant where the body of high quality evidence is low, as is often the case in most areas of clinical dentistry.

The guidelines as set out make an important point about considering the quality of evidence in an oral presentation and we concur that speakers should be encouraged to consider these issues within their presentations, notwithstanding the caveats above.

As the author notes, a large conference such as Europerio is not sustainable without the generous support of industry sponsors, but we, like other conference organisers, are very aware of the need to avoid commercial bias. However, we are all affected by conflicts of interest (which may not only be related to links to industry) and whilst we strongly agree with the idea of full disclosure, it must also be recognised that a disclosed conflict of interest is not in some way considered a 'bad thing' rather than simply seen as an open declaration.2 A wider debate on this issue deserves to be encouraged, as has occurred to some extent already by our medical colleagues.