Teeth in a Day is a streamlined process for replacing one or both rows of missing teeth in one day. The process of placing a full row of teeth with traditional dental implants can take several months, if not a year or more, between preparing the jaw, placing implants and allowing them to heal, and finally completing the dental restoration with prosthetic teeth. With Teeth in a Day, your dentist designs and creates the dental restoration using a 3D model of the patient’s mouth, placing a removable denture on the same day as dental implants and adjusting and permanently attaching a denture once the implants have healed. This expedites the restoration process and provides functioning replacement teeth nearly immediately. The Teeth in a Day procedure takes a few hours per arch, with around an hour for implant surgery and an hour for restoration, with the majority of planning and design occurring behind the scenes. This means the patient can spend far less time in the dentist’s chair and far more time with a secure, attractive dental restoration.
Teeth in a Day could be a good option for anyone who’s missing an entire row of teeth or learns that they’ll need to have all their teeth extracted, though the procedure is more successful when patients are generally healthy and can heal more efficiently. It is also more successful for patients who haven’t been missing their natural teeth for too long, because the jawbone begins to degrade when the natural teeth are missing; these patients are more likely to have more robust natural bone that can be expected to sufficiently support Teeth in a Day.
The Teeth in a Day treatment begins with a high-resolution CT scan of the patient’s jawbone. Using this CT scan, the dentist makes a three-dimensional replica of the jawbone that is used with specialized software to plan the optimal location for dental implant placement, which allows planning to take place with less chair time for the patient. The CT scan also indicates to the dentist whether bone grafts are required before implants can be placed. Once the implant placement has been designed, an attachment appliance that affixes over the implants is crafted so that it’s ready immediately after implant placement, and a temporary denture is custom-made to fit over this appliance.
After these appliances have been crafted, the patient’s Teeth in a Day procedure begins. The dentist will extract any remaining damaged teeth before placing the dental implant posts, the attachment appliance, and the temporary dental restoration. In most cases, four or five dental implants are placed in each arch; these implant posts are used to support an entire row of prosthetic teeth. After the implant posts have had time to heal, the dentist will place attachment abutments and take impressions of the jaws to craft a permanent restoration, unless the patient is planning to continue to use their temporary restoration. When the temporary restoration is being used, the dentist will adjust the restoration before permanently attaching it to the implant posts and attachment abutments, making final fit adjustments as needed.