After preparing and then working together remotely for three years, more than 90 academics and clinicians from around the world finally met in Lisbon, Portugal in May 2023 for the 7th ITI Consensus Conference to take a deep dive into 5 topics of major importance to the field of implant dentistry.

• Surgical techniques
• Technology
• Oral medicine
• Patient benefits
• Implant placement and loading protocols

Over the course of 3 days, the participants distilled fact from myth through hot debate in breakout and plenary sessions with the aim of defining Consensus Statements and recommendations based on the latest available literature intended to guide implant dentistry professionals in their day-to-day work for the next five years. The hard work by this dedicated group of experts has resulted in 13 review articles, which can be openly accessed here.

For this edition of the Consensus Conference, the ITI took a novel approach to informing and engaging the broader implant dentistry community regarding the development and execution of the Consensus Conference and the publication of the proceedings by involving five members of the Young ITI Global as Consensus Conference Reporters: Matthew Brennand Roper (UK; group 1 – surgical techniques), Teresa Chanting Sun (Taiwan; group 2 – technology), Yukihiro Takeda (Japan; group 3 – oral medicine), Lucrezia Paternò Holtzman (Italy; group 4 – patient benefits), and Rafael Lazarin (Brazil; group 5 – implant placement and loading protocols). Each of the reporters assigned to one of the five working groups was given the task to regularly report on discussions and debates within their respective group during the conference. The reporters were also invited to submit a narrative review summarizing the main findings of their working group as a follow-up to the Consensus Conference. These five articles form the core of this Forum Implantologicum feature topic.

The aim of this series is to provide a broader dental audience beyond the strictly academic community with key information on the goals, findings, and recommendations from the 2023 ITI Consensus Conference, and thus making the important link between science and practice. In each article, you will find a digest of each Group’s consensus report with a particular focus on the statements and clinical recommendations and their potential implementation in daily practice. With these articles, we intend to provide practical and valuable insights that are useful even to those dental professionals who are unlikely to read the full proceedings of the Consensus Conference. At the same time however, we also want to promote these proceedings actively through these narrative review articles by our reporters as we are sure that everyone will find useful information in one of the 13 systematic review articles from the Consensus Conference.

On the behalf of the Editorial Board, we hope that you enjoy this feature series and will find plenty of useful tools and insights for your daily work with patients.

Best regards,

Michael M. Bornstein