How long does it take to get a dental implant? Skip to main content

How long does it take to get a dental implant?

Using the most recent advances in dental implant technology, Dr. Loetscher is able to place single stage implants. These implants do not require a second procedure to uncover them, but do require a minimum of six weeks of healing time before artificial teeth are placed. There are even situations where the implant can be placed at the same time as the tooth extraction – further minimizing your number of surgical procedures.

Dental implant placement is a team effort between an oral and maxillofacial surgeon and a restorative dentist. Dr. Loetscher performs the actual implant surgery, initial tooth extractions, and bone grafting if necessary. The restorative dentist (your dentist) fits and makes the permanent prosthesis. Your dentist will also make any temporary prosthesis needed during the implant process.

“Hello, Dr. Loetscher here. So, one of the questions I get is how long does it take to get dental implants? And really, what people are wondering, “How long does it take to get your tooth on an implant?” And so, it kinda depends on the situation.

Probably several times a week, we have someone walk in the door that broken their front tooth, and we’ll put them to sleep, take the tooth out, put an implant in, and our on-site lab here will scan and mill a tooth, and they’ll leave with a front tooth right in place. It’ll look just like the original one. Although it’s a temporary tooth, that implant has to sit in the bone for four to six months and fully fuse with the bone.

The implants are made out of titanium and the bone will actually chemically bond to it so strong, you can never remove it. So, we put this temporary tooth in, we tell them to be cautious not to chew hard. And then five or six months later, they get the final porcelain crown that goes on that they can chew on. It’ll be one of the strongest teeth in their mouth.

There’s some people that are missing bone in the area, so they come in and we do this quite often as well. We’ll take some bone, maybe from the lower jaw. We’ll do some tissue engineering process while we rebuild the bone. And that sometimes sits for six months. And then six months later, we’ll put their implant in and then make that temporary tooth. And again, you need to wait about four months to get your final tooth. So, you go through that integration stage but unless we’re building the site up with bone, quite often, we can put the tooth on right then.

Another process we do quite often, people have failing teeth and we take out all their teeth, or maybe all their top teeth, and then put in many implants, six implants per jaw bone. And that day we’ll take their teeth out, put the implants in, and we’ll be able to scan a whole bridge of temporary teeth, and they’ll leave with that bridge of teeth in. Screws right in their implants, so they get their teeth right away while they’re asleep. Teeth come out, implants go in, and they get their new set of teeth the same day but the same situation, those implants need to integrate for four to six months. Then you get your final set of teeth that’s made out of more durable material in the final set of porcelain. And so, they’re higher cost than the temporary growing teeth we put on. So, it kinda varies situation to situation but nowadays most people get their teeth pretty quickly on the same day.”

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