New software improves ease of use, speed and full arch capture

ST. PAUL, Minn. – (August 3, 2009) – After debuting with a regional rollout, the 3M™ ESPE™ Lava™ Chairside Oral Scanner C.O.S. is now available to dentists nationwide, allowing offices across the country to experience the productivity boosts achieved with digital impressioning. Additionally, the scanner’s upgraded software, Lava Software 2.0 for Chairside Oral Scanner, offers dentists greater ease-of-use. With nationwide availability and a full list of approved indications that include crowns, multiple adjacent units, inlay/onlays, 3-4 unit bridges, seated implant abutment and veneers, it is now easier than ever for dentists to prescribe traditional PFM or sophisticated CAD/CAM restorations and to experience the benefits of the digital workflow.

Data shows that the precise restorations created with the Lava C.O.S. bring dramatic productivity gains and attract new patients to dental offices. By using the Lava C.O.S. to create detailed 3D impressions, dentists using the system have reported a 41 percent reduction in seating times for single unit crowns1 and a remake rate due to marginal fit that is 80 percent below the reported industry average.2 Additional productivity gains are now possible with Lava Software 2.0, which introduces several upgrades to the system, including easier anterior and full arch scanning, a faster scanning speed, and reduced processing times.

"These advancements signify our commitment to the progression of digital impressions as the standard of choice for the impression-taking procedure," said Wayne Roen, business director, digital restorative dentistry, 3M ESPE. "With our nationwide availability for dentists and our flexible outsourcing model for labs, we seek to provide easy access to the digital workflow and the efficiency that comes with it."

Working closely with a core group of Lava C.O.S. users over the past year, 3M ESPE has enhanced the system based on user feedback to further increase its benefits, namely the level of productivity that is facilitated by digital impression-taking.

"I’ve been amazed with the productivity I’ve experienced with the Lava C.O.S." said Dr. John Weston, a dentist who has tested the new software and has completed hundreds of restorations. "Now, with the new software the overall speed, ease of use and ability to capture full arches have improved significantly, and our cases require virtually no adjustments."

"The new Lava C.O.S. software has enabled me to do larger cases in less visits thereby making my practice more profitable." said Dr. Ronald Rosenburg. "Full arch dentistry has become so much easier and less stressful and the Lava C.O.S. has made dentistry so much fun and has made me a better dentist."

The Lava C.O.S. is a digital impression system that features 3M ESPE’s proprietary 3D-in-Motion technology. This technology allows doctors to capture and simultaneously view continuous 3D video images, and the dental industry is the first to benefit from this breakthrough in digital imaging. Doctors can assess their preparation and margin using several review features unique to digital dentistry. Doctors can specify either a traditional (PFM) or CAD/CAM restoration, including a Lava Restoration, and then send the digital prescription to their lab for marking the margin and cutting the die. The process is complete once the lab receives a technologically advanced stereolithography (SLA) model for finishing and ships the final restoration back to the doctor.

Any dentist can purchase a Lava C.O.S. and any lab can participate in the digital workflow, utilizing a business model that requires no capital investment from a lab and allows doctors to work with their existing labs.

For more information, visit www.3MESPE.com/LavaCOS or call 1-800-634-2249.

3M ESPE manufactures and markets more than 2,000 products and services designed to help dental professionals improve their patients' oral health care. 3M Health Care, one of 3M’s six major business segments, provides world-class innovative products and services to help health care professionals improve the practice and delivery of patient care in medical, oral care, drug delivery and health information markets. For more information on the complete 3M ESPE line of dental products visit the 3M ESPE Web site at www.3MESPE.com or call the 3M ESPE Technical Hotline at 1-800-634-2249. Products are available for purchase through authorized 3M ESPE distributors.

3M, ESPE, Impregum, Penta, Pentamix, Lava, RelyX, Ketac, Filtek, Adper, Sof-Lex and Imprint are trademarks of 3M ESPE or 3M ESPE AG.

¹ Source: 3M internal data
² Source: 3M internal data and 2007 NADL data