All-on-4

What is the difference in an All-on-4 full arch restoration and old-fashioned denture? Old-fashioned dentures are not attached to anything. They're held over the jawbone by suction created between the appliance and the gum tissue by saliva. And as long as you don't need to chew a whole lot or smile real big, they're going to work fantastically. The All-on-4 concept is an entire arch, so all of a dental arch on four or five or six dental implants. The name All-on-4 is a trademarked industry name for a product of a full arch of teeth on four, or five, or six dental implants. It's something that stays attached to the dental implants that you wear 24/7. You brush them just like natural teeth and no one is aware of the fact that you wear or have a dental prosthesis. So the biggest difference between an All-on-4, also known as a full arch hybrid, and a set of dentures is the fact that the All-on-4 or full arch hybrid is attached to you. It's part of you. The ideal patient for the All-on-4 treatment modality is someone whose dental situation can no longer be served well by conventional dentistry. That is to say that fillings and crowns have stopped working, teeth with root canal therapies are breaking, or dental pain is present with great regularity. From initial consultation to the initial surgery where the bad teeth are removed and a set of good teeth are installed is about two and a half weeks. The patient then needs to heal for about 16 weeks before fabrication of the second set of permanent full arch teeth are fabricated. So from start to finish, we're about six months, but there is not a day within that six months that the patient has to be without teeth and they get their first great set of teeth at that first surgery, that only surgery that they have. The wonderful thing about the All-on-4 arch is that it has almost complete flexibility in fabrication and that ranges from color, to shape of teeth, to arrangement of teeth. Lots of people who need full arch restorations have high dental anxiety. Just understand that it's not scary after your surgery is over and your teeth are in the first time. It's just as easy as coming and sitting down with a bunch of friends and working on a little project.