Full mouth dental implants: a complete restoration

What “full mouth” actually means here

The phrase is used loosely in dentistry, so it is worth being precise. On this page it means both jaws restored on implants, typically four implants and a fixed bridge in each — eight implants, twenty-four to twenty-eight teeth, planned and made as one piece of work.

It does not mean a set of implants under existing dentures, which is a different and much less expensive treatment covered on implant-retained dentures. And it does not mean crowning every tooth you already have, which is conventional restorative work rather than implant surgery.

Why both arches at once is a different exercise

When only one jaw is being rebuilt, the other jaw is the reference. It tells us where the new teeth should meet, how much room there is, and what the bite has been doing for the last thirty years.

When both go at once, that reference disappears. The position everything meets in has to be established from scratch — the height of the face, where the upper teeth sit against the lip, how far the lower jaw comes forward. It is the most demanding part of the planning, and it is the reason full mouth cases take longer at the try-in stage than patients expect. The temporary bridges are worn for four months partly to heal, and partly to test whether the bite we have designed is one you can live in.

The honest financial conversation

£22,900 is a great deal of money, and the comparison patients usually make is with a set of dentures at around £2,000. That comparison is real and we do not dodge it.

What we would put beside it is what the next twenty years look like in each case. Dentures need relining every few years and remaking every seven or eight, and the ridge underneath continues to shrink, so each set fits slightly worse than the last. The ten-year comparison table on the costs page sets those figures out.

That does not make implants cheaper. Over ten years they are still substantially more expensive, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. What they are is a different proposition: a fixed thing you maintain, rather than a temporary thing you replace.

Most full mouth patients here spread the cost over sixty months, which on £22,900 is £381.67 a month at 0% APR. Finance is subject to status, and Ardan Implant Clinic acts as a credit broker, not a lender.

The appointment itself

Four to six hours is a long time in a dental chair, and almost every full mouth patient is sedated for it. Intravenous sedation with a registered sedationist means you are conscious and able to respond but remember very little of it, and the time passes as if it were twenty minutes.

You need somebody to take you home and stay with you that night. You will not be able to drive, and the arrangements for that are made at the planning appointment rather than mentioned in passing on the day.

Who should not have this done

Anyone with teeth still worth keeping. This is the case we turn away most often: a patient exhausted by years of dentistry, asking us to take the lot out and start again. Exhaustion is understandable and it is not a clinical indication. If a dozen of your teeth have decades left, removing them is a decision that cannot be undone.

We will map out what could be saved, what it would cost to save it, and how it would compare. Sometimes the answer really is that everything has to go. Often it is not.