Stanley M. Bergman
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at Henry Schein
Thank you, Graham. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Our first quarter financial results reflect solid earnings, driven by gross profit -- gross margin expansion and strong recovery from last quarter's cyber incident. We estimate that the incident lowered merchandise sales growth by low to mid-single-digit percentages during the quarter. On PPE products, sales continued to decrease primarily due to lower glove prices for the last year -- from the last year. We estimate a reduced impact on sales growth from PPE as the year progresses. We're very pleased with the progress we're making on executing our BOLD+1 strategic plan, and we are pleased with the contribution of our recent acquisitions.
These acquisitions contributed to the profitability we achieved in the first quarter. We are affirming our expectations for 2024 non-GAAP diluted EPS and 2024 adjusted EBITDA growth and tightening our expectations for 2024 total sales growth. Our projected sales growth reflects continued recovery from last year's cyber incident and a strong pipeline of new specialty products and software innovation. So let me turn to the review of our business units and start with dental on the distribution side. In North America, patient traffic to dental offices in January and February was impacted by weather events and by seasonal viruses, including the flu, but improved beginning in March.
Overall, we see steady dental merchandise sales improvement throughout the quarter, reflecting this trend, which has continued into April. In the U.S., our THRIVE Signature program is contributing to sales growth and membership continued to increase with about 2,000 new members added in the first quarter bringing the total number of THRIVE Signature members to approximately 5,000. For monthly subscription, this program provides a package of services to customers such as free shipping, discount on product and services and THRIVE reward points, which, of course, in the aggregate drive customer loyalty. International merchandise also experienced steady sales improvement in most markets as the quarter progressed. Sales growth was negatively impacted by two less selling days in most of the international markets.
Global Dental equipment sales were consistent with the prior year and were favorably affected by a shift in sales in the United States from late 2023 into the first quarter. Equipment sales grew in North of America but decreased slightly internationally. So now a few comments on our dental specialties, the global dental specialties business. We had a strong growth across oral surgical products, endodontics and orthodontics largely driven by acquisitions, and we believe we also gained market share organically in the Global Dental specialties market. The North American implant sales were largely consistent with last year. And international sales under our leading BioHorizons Camlog brand were very good, and this was especially good in Germany. In the first quarter, international sales benefited from the introduction of Easy 2.0, our value implant system in Germany, which is also designed for ease of use.
We expect the launch of a new BioHorizons implant system in the U.S. in the second half of the year and early next year in Canada. This launch will be for a new bone-level implant with a deep conical connection and is based upon our proven Camlog technology. We expect this will expand our addressable market significantly in the United States, thus increasing implant sales growth in the second half of the year. So along with the introduction of Simi Valley implants, this launch will position the company well in all market segments in North America. We achieved good growth sales during the first quarter as we launched our Edge branded products through the Henry Schein U.S. distribution business. Although orthodontic product sales are relatively small part of our specialty product sales, the launch of our Motion Probe Bracket System is performing well and specifically addressing the exploration last year's motion product preference.
We also launched the biotech Smilers, Clear Aligner and clinical, digital workflow software at the American Association of Orthodontics meeting last week, both of which have already been successfully launched in Europe through Biotech Dental. Let me now turn to the technology and value-added services businesses. We're the largest component is Henry Schein One, our dental software business. The customer base for Dentrix Ascend and Dentally, our cloud-based solutions continue to grow and increased 36% in the first quarter over the prior year, and now we have approximately 8,000 installations of our cloud-based systems. We achieved solid growth in our revenue cycle management e-claims business despite the impact of Change healthcare impact of their cyber incident.
This was due to the Henry Schein One team's prompt responsiveness to establish an alternative approach to processing customer insurance claims. Within 48 hours, we successfully were processing claims and backlog through an alternative clearing house. We are very pleased with the team's approach on dealing with the Change Healthcare cyber incident. And this helped us navigate a challenge for our customers, and I might add many new customers that now have turned to Henry Schein One for help during this challenging period for Change Healthcare. Although we believe overall technology sales were impacted by the Change Healthcare cyber incident, we expect sales in the second quarter to return to more normalized growth levels. Turning to the Medical business.
There was a strong contribution from sales of point-of-care diagnostics, including flu and multi, that's a flu COVID combination test and a shift in sales towards lower-priced generic pharmaceuticals in our medical business. Our North American Rescue business, which provides first responder and military medical solutions as well as our Home Solutions businesses performed well during the quarter. We also completed our acquisition of TriMed in early April strengthening our medical group's deep and long-standing relationships with IDNs, ASC and orthopedic specialist customers as we expand our offering into the orthopedic marketplace.
Finally, we are pleased to share that late last week, we hosted our fourth Annual THRIVELIVE event in Las Vegas and had record attendance this year of nearly 1,500 attendees with significant support from our suppliers. This is primarily an education event where our customers gain continuing education credits through seminars in the largest -- in the latest innovation and clinical dentistry, including digital equipment and software. This year featured the launch of some new innovations to help our customers attract new business, such as our new Dentrix eligibility Pro module that automates the delivery of claims eligibility data directly into the practice management software system. We believe this is quite a unique software feature.
And I'm particularly pleased with the integration was Reserve with Google, a new product that we also launched at the THRIVELIVE event. This enables consumers who search on Google to make dental appointments directly from the pro -- from their Google business listing into our customers' practice management systems and schedulers. These advancements support our continued commitment to driving innovation in the industry with products and services that add value to our customers' dental practices, enabling our customers to operate in more efficient practice while actually providing better clinical care.
Let me now turn over the call to Ron to discuss our quarterly financial results in a bit more detail. Thank you very much.
