Sirona Dental Systems : Crown for the queen of the jungle

Bensheim/Salzburg. After Danish zoos received negative headlines in the press over the past few months, one Danish zoo is now attracting positive attention - with a spectacular dental procedure. The damaged carnassial tooth of a lioness in Ree Park Safari in Ebeltoft (near Aarhus) was restored using the CAD/CAM system CEREC. The Danish zoo wanted to use the benefits of the chairside system, which allows treatment in just one session, for its animal patient.

The veterinary team was faced with a few challenges when operating on the 12-year-old African lioness Naomi. Adult lions cannot be anesthetized for more than two to three hours, meaning that the entire procedure needed to be completed in that period of time. Since extracting such a large tooth is difficult and lions need the carnassial tooth to be able to bite, a root canal treatment was carried out and the tip of the carnassial tooth was fitted with a crown. The CEREC method allowed the entire treatment to be successfully completed in just a single procedure. "Anesthesia is very stressful for wild animals. This was unavoidable for the root canal treatment but we did not want to put Naomi through it a second time to fit the crown," says vet Jens Ruhnau, who led the operation. Naomi recovered from the operation quickly without any complications and is now back to her old self.

Treating such a big cat shows how the universality of CEREC. "The clear advantage of using CEREC since it requires only one procedure to take a digital impression of the tooth and carry out the restoration is beneficial not only for humans," says Birgit Möller, Head of Product Management CEREC at Sirona. After treatment was successfully completed, all those involved were clearly relieved. "It was a fascinating procedure and I am sure that it will not be the last time we use state-of-the-art technology like CEREC to improve the lives of our animals," said Jesper Stagegaard, the director of Ree Park.

Copyright: Niels Dencker and Jannich Hegelund

Sirona Dental GmbH
Sirona Straße 1
A-5071 Wals bei Salzburg
Austria
P +43 (0) 662 / 2450-0
F +43 662 2450-109590
contact@sirona.com
www.sirona.com

Sirona, the dental technology and innovation leader, has served dealers and dentists worldwide for more than 130 years. Sirona develops, manufactures, and markets a complete line of dental products, including CAD/CAM restoration systems (CEREC), digital intra-oral, panoramic and 3D imaging systems, dental treatment centers and handpieces. Visit www.sirona.com for more information about Sirona and its products.

This information and any attachment thereto contains forward-looking information about Sirona Dental Systems, Inc.'s financial results, guidance and estimates, business prospects, and products and services that involve substantial risks and uncertainties or other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. You can identify these statements by the use of words such as "may," "could," "estimate," "will," "believe," "anticipate," "think," "intend," "expect," "project," "plan," "target," "forecast", and similar words and expressions which identify forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, and other factors. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. For a discussion of such risks, uncertainties and other matters that could cause actual results to differ materially, including risks relating to, among other factors, the market for dental product and services, pricing, future sales volume of the Company's products, the possibility of changing economic, market and competitive conditions, dependence on products, dependence on key personnel, technological developments, intense competition, market uncertainties, dependence on distributors, ability to manage growth, dependence on key suppliers, dependence on key members of management, government regulation, acquisitions and affiliations, readers are urged to carefully review and consider various disclosures made by the Company in its Annual Report on Form 10-K and in its reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this document or the attachments to reflect new information or future events or developments after the date any such statement is made.