Jorge M. Gomez
Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer at DENTSPLY SIRONA
Thank you, Don. Good morning, and thanks to all of you for joining us to discuss another strong quarter in our fiscal year 2021. As a reminder, my remarks today will be based on non-GAAP financial results unless otherwise noted. Please refer to the reconciliation tables at the back of the press release and slides, both of which are posted in the Investors section of our website.
In the third quarter, we delivered strong revenue growth across the business in both consumables and T&E. The business delivered organic revenue growth of 21.1% and reported growth of 19.4%. Because the pandemic makes it difficult to gauge growth, I want to point out that we also posted robust organic sales growth versus 2019 pre-COVID levels. Compared to the third quarter of 2019, reported sales grew 11.1% and organic sales grew 10.7%, driven by growth in both segments and across all regions.
This performance against the 2019 baseline confirms the steady recovery trend we have seen in 2021. Gross profit was $624 million or 58.4% of sales. Our margin rate remained steady, reflecting a balanced contribution from all of our businesses and a more normalized mix. Looking back, we have delivered 150 basis points of gross margin expansion since Q3 2019, the pre-COVID baseline, attributed to portfolio optimization and our efforts to simplify the organization over the last few years. As you all know, the global supply chain environment continues to be a challenge in terms of cost, availability of components and labor across industries. So far, we have been able to meet demand at a normal pace and continue to work on various operational strategies to minimize the impact to our customers and to our P&L.
Now turning to SG&A. In the third quarter, we had expenses of $373 million or 34.9% of sales. This ratio remains below pre-COVID 2019 levels, reflecting the benefits from our efficiency improvement initiatives. Quarter-over-quarter, SG&A increased as we ramped planned SG&A investments, particularly in sales and marketing to support our growth plans in strategic areas, including clear aligners, implants and digital capabilities. Q3 spending on R&D was up 31.6% year-over-year to $35 million. We expect this level of increased investment to continue as we are committed to delivering innovation and great solutions to our customers. As a result of the heightened emphasis on R&D over the last few years, we are pleased to see a much healthier solutions pipeline, as Don will discuss later.
Turning now to profitability. Operating profit grew to $216 million versus $197 million last year. Operating margin was 20.2%. Looking back, we have delivered 230 basis points of operating margin expansion since Q3 2019, the pre-COVID baseline. We have expanded margins and we have also made meaningful investments in our business, which are essential to fund sustainable long-term growth initiatives. Net interest and other expense increased versus last year mainly due to the impact from foreign exchange fluctuations.
Regarding taxes in the quarter, our effective tax rate increased to 23.4% from 20.3% in the prior year quarter, primarily due to the geographic mix of pretax income and our continued business recovery from COVID. Turning to earnings. EPS was $0.68 versus $0.67 in the prior year quarter. Moving to segment performance. Versus the third quarter of 2020, Consumables and Technologies & Equipment grew 15.9% and 25.3%, respectively. Both segments posted a strong growth across all product categories. The Consumables segment had sales of $440 million, an organic increase of 15.9% versus the prior year.
Overall growth was strong across all regions and in all categories, most notably within the endo and resto parts of our portfolio, which represent strategic priorities for our business. This quarter, we launched ProTaper Ultimate, the first major endodontic platform innovation launched in our endo business in more than five years. Market reactions thus far have been very positive.
Additionally, the rebound in the preventative business, particularly in the U.S., continued in Q3. The Consumables market has been resilient, and our teams are executing well through the recovery. Currency favorably impacted consumable sales by 1.3%, offset by a reduction of 4.8% due to divestitures and discontinued products. Moving on to Technologies & Equipment segment results. T&E organic sales grew 25.3% versus the prior year with a strong overall growth in all regions and product categories. Growth was most notably driven by the digital category and implants. There continues to be a strong momentum on increasing digital capabilities within dental offices.
Demand is high for digital devices such as Primescan and imaging equipment such as our new Axeos unit. We are seeing a growing trend in dental offices upgrading from 2D to 3D units, and we are observing this trend in all global markets. Our Clear Aligners franchise drove a strong year-over-year growth this quarter. The aligners market continues to grow faster than most categories, and the aligners business is a key contributor to our growth strategy. In the dentist directed channel, SureSmile continues its expansion domestically and internationally. In addition, the new software we recently launched has been positively received by the market due to its significant user experience enhancements.
The upcoming launch of VPro will be another key differentiator for our SureSmile offering. As you may recall, when we acquired Propel, earlier in the year, we indicated our intention to utilize it for SureSmile as well. SureSmile is on track to meet our run rate goal for the year. After a very strong first half in 2021, the DTC channel experienced softness in Q3. We believe this is largely attributed to COVID recovery dynamics and seasonality. Given the run rate we are seeing for Byte in the second half of this year, there is a possibility we may not fully achieve the annualized run rate goal for this year.
DTC is an exciting new category in the dental industry and Byte is strategically positioned for growth with its focus on customer experience and key differentiators such as HyperByte and high engagement with customers through the entire aligner journey. Lastly, within T&E, currency favorably impacted sales by 1.2% as well as a benefit from acquisitions of 7.7%, offset by a reduction of 9.4% due to divestitures and discontinued products. Now turning to financial performance by region during the third quarter. U.S. sales were $399 million, a growth of 25.3% versus last year.
Organic sales growth was 20.1%. U.S. dental sales volumes remain at close to normal levels in both segments despite COVID variants that spiked late in the quarter. European sales were also $399 million, a growth of 13.6% versus last year. Organic growth was 17.8%. Similar to the U.S. sales, the majority of product lines in Consumables and T&E are running at pre-COVID levels or better. Rest of the World sales were $271 million, a growth --