Expasyl inventor tours Australia

The inventor of Expasyl, the innovative temporary gingival retraction system manufactured by Pierre Roland and distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Gunz Dental, toured late last year to help promote the product he spent over 20 years developing.

“In prosthodontics, the functional and aesthetic results depend significantly on the quality of the impression,” Dr Lesage said. “To obtain a good impression, the impression material has to flow all around the tooth and into the sulcus without any defect.

“In order to obtain a good flow, we have to deal with several interconnected factors and one of these is soft tissue management. Retracting the marginal gingiva and controlling bleeding are commonly critical issues and this was the driving force behind my development of Expasyl.”

Dr Lesage has been experimenting to perfect and then industrialise the product to the point where it could be manufactured to a consistent quality since the 1970s.

“I hold six patents and two of these relate to Expasyl,” Dr Lesage said, who divides his time between private practice dentistry in France and product development. “Expasyl today is essentially a mix of white clay to facilitate the physical act of retraction, water and aluminium chloride to achieve hemostasis.

“The first versions of the product used algae instead of white clay. The clay is much easier to obtain than algae and the quality is more consistent, which are both key to industrialising and mass-producing the product.

“Once I had perfected it, it took several more years to find a partner to bring it to market. In 1991, I started working with Pierre Roland and we finally launched Expasyl to the world in year 2000.

“It’s a very good product and I use it every day on my patients. It negates the need for retraction cord. With cord, you can damage tissue whereas Expasyl ensures the rapid recovery of the marginal gingiva. We now have some 95,000 dentists in 40 countries using it and that has made all the hard work worthwhile.”