In an ideal world, we’d all have perfectly white, straight, and healthy teeth throughout our lifetime. Unfortunately despite practicing our best oral hygiene routines and scheduling dental visits for periodontal cleanings, tooth decay; gum disease and injuries may result in missing teeth or extractions.
Missing teeth are a real problem for many Americans. In fact, the American College of Prosthodontists reports that 120 million Americans are missing at least one tooth and an astounding 36 million Americans don’t have any teeth at all.
This may sound like sobering statistics, but the good news is that over the years cases of missing teeth have risen so have the number of treatment options available to replace them. In this blog, our own Dr. Emmanuel Aguilar at American Dental Clinic sheds some light on a game-changing dental implant option called All-on-4® implants.
About now you may be thinking doesn’t it take several months to get dental implants? While it’s true that traditional dental implant treatment plans typically happen over the course of several months with All-on-4® implants the entire process provides some great perks including an expedited timeline.
This is how it plays out. In order to assess the health and strength of your jawbone where you’re missing teeth, your provider performs a comprehensive examination. At American Dental Clinic we use 3D digital imaging to gain as much detail as possible. During this initial evaluation, we try to determine if your jaw is strong enough to support an implant. If necessary, we can do bone grafting surgery to build up the jawbone so that it can provide a solid foundation for your implant.
All-on-4® implants work on the same principle and share many of the same steps as traditional dental treatment, but that’s where the similarities end. Think teeth in a day. Like traditional implants, your dental surgeon makes incisions in your gums to insert or screw the titanium posts in place. But instead of inserting an implant for every missing tooth, the All-on-4® implant option can replace the entire top or bottom arch with only four implants, thus the All-On-4 name.
Here at American Dental Clinic, we use special hybrid dentures that snap onto All-on-4® implants. A bar-like device connects to prosthetic teeth. We attach the bar to the implants permanently to provide a stable and easy-to-clean prosthetic. Like traditional implants, it will take some time for the implants and your jawbone to fuse together, but you’ll leave the appointment with fully functioning teeth.
Since we’re not creating an incision and inserting an implant for every missing tooth, our All-on-4® implant treatment option with hybrid dentures provides a more efficient and less invasive surgical option for replacing missing teeth. Just imagine walking into a dental office with missing teeth and leaving the same day safely wearing your dentures. Now that’s something to smile about.
Another great benefit of All-on-4® implants is that they are long-standing as well as natural-looking. Simply maintain an at-home oral hygiene routine as you did previously – brushing twice a day and flossing. With at-home oral care plus regular dental office visits for professional cleanings and dental examinations your All-on-4® implants can last a lifetime. Don’t worry if you experience a mishap and your denture breaks, we can repair or replace it right in our office using the original design we created.
If you are missing teeth and would like to know if All-on-4® implants are right for you, make an appointment for a consultation. Use our online booking tool or call American Dental Clinic in San Diego today at 858-216-4662.
