Dental · Dental Implants
Full Mouth Dental Implants
A whole arch is rebuilt on a small number of implants, fixed in place rather than resting on the gum.
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Quick answer
When an arch has failed — every tooth gone, or every remaining tooth beyond saving — the plan stops replacing teeth one at a time. A small number of implants carries a single bridge spanning the whole jaw. Four, six or eight posts, one fixed set of teeth.
The comparison here is not with other implant work. It is with a denture. A denture rests on gum, moves while you eat, and does nothing to stop the jaw shrinking underneath it. Fixed arch work is screwed to bone, and the bone stays loaded. That is the difference you are buying, and it is substantial.
Fixed or removable, and why the answer is not obvious
Not every full-arch plan ends in something screwed down. An implant-retained overdenture clips onto two to four implants and comes out for cleaning. It costs considerably less, it is far easier to keep clean, and it solves the movement problem that makes conventional dentures intolerable.
Fixed bridgework does not come out. It feels like teeth, and it is cleaned like a bridge — under the span, daily, with tools you will be taught to use. Patients who cannot or will not maintain that do better with something removable, and a clinic that never raises the option is not planning around you.
The temporary is the long part
A full arch is usually loaded on the day with a fixed temporary bridge — acrylic, functional, not the finished article. You live on it for three to six months while the implants integrate, on a soft diet that is genuinely restrictive for the first eight weeks.
The definitive bridge comes on the second trip, after integration is confirmed radiographically. Anyone describing the same-day teeth as the final result is misdescribing the treatment.
What the quote has to separate
Full-arch quotes collapse a lot of work into one number. Get these itemised:
- How many implants, per arch, and why that number.
- Whether the price is per arch or for both — the commonest source of confusion in this category.
- Extractions of any remaining teeth, and whether they are included.
- The temporary bridge, and the definitive bridge, as separate lines.
- The definitive material: acrylic on titanium, zirconia, or something else.
- Both trips, and the nights each implies.
Usually suits you
- An arch that is failing or already edentulous
- Bone volume sufficient for the planned anchor points
- Willingness to keep to a soft diet for eight weeks
- Two trips separated by several months
Needs a closer look
- Severe resorption in the upper jaw
- Heavy smoking, or uncontrolled diabetes
- Difficulty with daily cleaning under a fixed span
- Expecting the final bridge on the first trip
The closest alternative
Where bone is limited at the back of the jaw, tilting the rear implants can avoid grafting altogether.
Questions worth asking
- Is this the same as All-on-4?
- All-on-4 is one way of doing it — four implants per arch, the back two tilted to reach available bone. Full-arch work is the broader category, and the right configuration might be four, six or eight posts, or a removable overdenture on fewer. The number follows the bone.
- Per arch or both jaws?
- This is the question that most often makes two quotes look different when they are not. Always confirm in writing whether a figure covers one jaw or two. A price that looks half as much usually is half as much, because it is half the work.
- How long does the bridge itself last?
- The implants are the durable part and commonly outlast the bridge on top. The bridge is a wearing component: acrylic teeth chip and are repaired or replaced, zirconia lasts longer and costs more. Plan for the bridge to need attention before the implants do.