By: Heliane Canepa, Nobel Biocare, President and CEO

That was obvious to me when I became President and CEO four years ago. The beauty of this dental implant company was that it already possessed the widest range of the highest quality products for every segment of the dental industry. In the Brånemark System®, it offered specialists the most highly researched implant system on the planet—a sophisticated set of tools and components that could be used to treat even the most difficult cases. The Replace® System, on the other hand, was so easy to use it allowed newcomers to begin placing implants with confidence. Nobel Biocare’s revolutionary TiUnite™ surface technology promised to make immediate function a reality for most implant patients. And the company’s Procera® CAD/CAM system set the standard for all-ceramic crowns for natural teeth, as well as for abutments, making it possible for all dentists to offer their patients breathtaking esthetic results.

Unfortunately, a thorny bramble of misperceptions hid this beautiful combination of assets.

All too many dentists perceived Nobel Biocare to be expensive, elitist, and overly complicated. Indeed, the company catalog contained something like 3,400 items––an embarrassment of riches! It overwhelmed practitioners who often didn’t know where to begin. One of my first acts, therefore, was to streamline our product offerings. Today our catalog contains 756 items.

Crown and Bridge and Implants
I felt we also had to hack away at the impression Nobel Biocare catered exclusively to specialists. We care about specialists, of course. The input of specialists has helped to make Nobel Biocare the world leader in our industry. But it troubled me that at the dawn of the 21st Century, 80 percent of the dental practitioners in North America were still not restoring a significant number of implant cases, and only six percent of general dentists were performing any sort of implant surgery. Furthermore, we realized that as more general dentists became involved with implants, referrals to the specialists would increase dramatically. The general dentists simply had not yet realized how easy implants had become using the systems offered by Nobel Biocare.

In 2002, we therefore launched an initiative we called C&B&I™––for crown and bridge and implants. This campaign promoted our vision that dentists around the world would soon be as comfortable with implants as they were with standard crown-and-bridge procedures. Along with Replace® Select, our Easy Abutment® System was a key component to making C&B&I not just a slogan but a reality. Another key element was the understanding that dentists and laboratories needed to work together as a team for the benefit of the patient.

As increasing number of general dentists have embraced implant dentistry, they’ve also come to understand that esthetics are of paramount importance. Implant patients of course are grateful for their regained function. But they care––passionately––about the appearance of their new smile. They take it for granted their new teeth will look great.

World leader in innovative esthetic solutions
NobelEsthetics provides a beautiful solution for every case, enabling doctors to meet their patients’ esthetic expectations while observing familiar crown and bridge fundamentals. To date, more than five million zirconia and alumina copings have been produced, providing superior metal-free restorations.

For implant patients, Esthetic Ceramic Abutments make extremely natural replications of tooth anatomy and esthetics a reality. The Esthetic Ceramic Abutments are pre-fabricated to mimic natural tooth abutments and optimize the emergence profile. With a lower facial margin and a rising interproximal margin, Esthetic Abutments are easier to prepare and more esthetic than any other prefabricated cement-retained abutment. They’re compatible with both Replace Select and Brånemark System implants.

The ultimate solution can be found in our Personalized Ceramic Procera® Abutments. Doctors use CAD/CAM technology to design these individualized abutments for each patient. The process allows for the creation of the most natural form and emergence profile imaginable. The doctor has virtually unlimited freehand design potential within a 15 x 15mm imaginary cylinder, depending upon the diameter and material chosen, and off-axis implant alignments can be compensated for. Moreover, costs are reduced, since prefabricated abutments don’t have to be stocked and painstakingly prepared.

New esthetic products
Reflecting our commitment to remain the world leader in innovative esthetic solutions, Nobel Biocare has just unveiled some new additions to the line of NobelEsthetics offerings, including:

• Procera® Forte ––This is a new scanner, larger than the Procera Piccolo, that makes it possible for the first time to scan 3- and 4-unit bridges. The bridges can then be fabricated from zirconia. Procera® Forte can also be used to scan abutments in ceramic, alumina, and titanium, as well as copings for crowns.

• NobelRondo™––This new porcelain, the first ever offered by Nobel Biocare, is one of the strongest alumina ceramics available, with a flexural strength of 120 MPa. Use of a unique layering technique results in the highest possible esthetic results. Moreover, both the NobelRondo tray and all the bottles feature a unique ergonomic design. Each bottle has a sculpted shape that fits into the user’s hand and can be opened with a flip of the thumb. All the bottles fit into a circular tray that spins to provide easy access to every bottle and is organized around our Color Harmony System.

Edentulous solutions
We at Nobel Biocare have dedicated ourselves to helping doctors replace damaged or missing teeth with restorations that are indistinguishable from natural teeth. But we also have not forgotten about the basic mission with which implant dentistry was founded, namely to help edentulous patients regain their lost function and confidence.

Our Procera Implant Bridge, milled from a single solid piece of titanium, provides one of the most precise, biocompatible restorations available. We are also promoting some new concepts for edentulous jaws that will offer patients a series of options depending upon their individual circumstances, which are somewhat analogous to the options airlines have been offering their customers for years.

Brånemark System® Zygoma. By using zygomatic implants, implant specialists can treat patients with severely resorbed maxillae without having to resort to bone grafting or sinus lifts. The implants are anchored in solid bone and can be restored immediately with a fixed prosthesis.

All-on-4. This “business class” solution uses only four implants (in either the mandible or the maxilla) to support an all-acrylic bridge with immediate function. Fast, fixed, and cost-effective, it employs a new and predictable protocol. The tilted posterior implants provide optimal prosthetic support.

Overdentures. These provide a simple “economy class” solution. Instead of using an all-acrylic bridge, the removable denture is stabilized on two implants with immediate function. Some patients may be able to reuse their existing dentures.

Somewhere between six and ten percent of the total world population is edentulous in both jaws. I’m appalled by that statistic! If we can send people to the moon, everyone on earth ought to be able to eat bread! Age and disease should not rob any individual, young or old, of the pleasures of eating. Today Nobel Biocare has the tools to make edentulism a fading memory from the past. My hope is within the next 20 years, this will happen.

Immediate Solutions
Other visions for the future of dentistry also inspire and energize us. Sometime in the near future, we hope to see people go to their dentists during their lunch hours to replace missing teeth, much as they go to the hairdresser today. We’re already so close to being able to make this a reality! After submitting 14 studies to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Nobel Biocare received clearance for immediate function of all our implants in all indications, excluding 3.0mm implants.

We possess it because of our unique TiUnite™ surface technology. This fantastic biomaterial promotes an actual integration of the implant with the bone. The result is an initial stability that makes immediate function possible. No competing implant system has this unique surface. When combined with bloodless surgical procedures that drastically reduce discomfort and hasten healing times, the “lunchtime” dental implant must be just around the corner.

Although the number of items in Nobel Biocare’s catalog has been slimmed down in recent years, Nobel Biocare’s customers still have so many options that they can enjoy “one-stop shopping.” The wealth of options reflects another of our mottos: “We provide. You decide.” There is no single best way to deliver implant dentistry to patients. Many different approaches are possible, and Nobel Biocare is committed to giving general dentists, specialists, and laboratory technicians everything they need, no matter which approach suits them. To help each individual decide what’s the best thing for him or her, we’ve made a huge commitment to providing continuing educational opportunities that range from lectures and hands-on programs to distance learning and Web-based tools to our premiere international gathering, the Nobel Biocare World Conference.

The thicket of complexity that once enshrouded our beautiful company has vanished. Whereas once we sold implants to specialists, we now provide solutions for patients. We've left behind our "cozy corner" image, which at one time caused us to appear walled off from the rest of the dental community. Our specialists––who a few years ago were reporting annual growth of 10 percent––are now in some cases seeing their business increase by 50 percent a year! Laboratories using Procera also are growing, and laboratory technicians have won recognition for being a critical part of the implant team.

Nobel Biocare is a company committed to breakthroughs. We launch new products twice a year, a claim no one else in the industry can make. Our competitors seem to constantly copy us, and we take that to be an honor. We think it means we’re doing a lot of things right. The beauty of Nobel Biocare has awakened, and there’s no stopping her now.

For more information on Nobel Biocare call toll-free 800-993-8100 or log on to www.nobelbiocare.com.