All-on-4, Your Questions Answered

8 June 2022

In this article, we invited the prosthodontist board-certified Dr. Esam Nahlah to answer your questions about dental implants and all-on-four.

What Is All-on-4?

All-on-4 is a procedure where we replace all the teeth in one arch or two arches.

Either the patient is already missing all their teeth or is about to lose them because of disease and decay.

And in this procedure, we are removing all the teeth and replacing them with dental implants.

4 to 6 implants per arch and there is a bridge that comes on top of these implants that fix the bridge to the implants. And the patient can have fixed teeth at the end of the procedure.

Click here to get a more detailed look at the All-on-4.

What Are The Benefits Of The All-on-4?

Patients got to experience having fixed teeth on the same day of the procedure. So they will never go out with a denture or missing teeth in their mouth so we can restore their mouth and restore their smile on the same day, plus, these implants are activating the bone of the jaw, so it helps the patient not to lose any more bone under the jaw and keep that structure of the bone and the jaw. It keeps their facial structure too.

What Is The Process For An All-on-4?

The first step is taking a record of the patient’s mouth. Take some pictures of their face, so Dr. Nahlah can start the smile design and once the smile design is ready, we schedule the patient for the transformation day. The patient comes in that morning, is made comfortable with local anesthetic and sedation, then Dr. Nahlah extracts all teeth that are necessary to be removed and places the implants. By the end of the day, Their bridge will be ready to be placed and attached to the implants, so they will walk out of the office with a new smile on their face.

How Long Does An All-on-4 Last?

All-on-4 is a procedure that can last many many years, and in some cases, can last a lifetime. It sometimes needs minor maintenance, but it can generally last over 20 years.

What Is The Recovery Time For An All-on-4?

The patient immediately can go back to their normal life. We do ask the patient not to do any heavy activities for the first 48 hours. After that, the patient can resume their activities like normal. The patient is usually on a soft diet for a 4-month period while the implant is healing and integrating into their jaw. After that, they can go on any diet they want to eat.

What Are Dental Implants Made Of?

Dental Implants are made of titanium. Titanium is a very biocompatible material for the body, so the bone integrated into the implant heals well. There was no scientific literature on body rejection of this material.

What Are The TEETH (BRIDGE) Made Of?

Zirconia porcelain looks lifelike, is very biocompatible and easy to clean, and has an extremely high fracture strength of 1,300 megapascals.

Are Dental Implants Cost-Effective?

Yes, they are. Dental implants and All-on-4 is a cost-effective procedure because we are not touching any of the adjacent teeth for doing bridge or root canals which makes it very cost-effective, plus when we replace the full arch of teeth, we are replacing them with four to six implants which makes this procedure very cost-effective.

Do You Have Any All-on-4 Success Stories You Would Like To Share?

Yes. I have two very interesting cases.

Watch Yolanda’s story here.

Watch Steven’s story here.

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