An implant is a three-month decision

The surgery is the short part. Here is the real calendar, from first scan to final crown, with the waiting written in.

The single most common misunderstanding about implants is the timeline. People hear “same-day teeth” and reasonably assume the whole thing is finished by dinner. What was placed that day is a temporary. The real crown comes months later.

That is not a criticism of immediate loading, it is a good technique in the right case. It is a criticism of how it is advertised.

The actual calendar

For an uncomplicated single tooth with adequate bone:

• Week 0, scan and plan. Cone-beam scan, digital wax-up, and a decision about whether a graft is needed. This is also when you get the written number.
• Week 2, placement. About an hour under local anaesthetic, guided by a printed stent. Most people work the next day.
• Weeks 3 to 14, nothing. Osseointegration. Bone grows onto the titanium. Two short reviews, no drilling.
• Week 15, scan and mill. Digital scan of the healed site, crown milled in-house, shade matched.
• Week 16, seat. Fitted and adjusted. Reviewed at six weeks and a year.

If a graft is required, add two to four months between the first two stages. If the site is in the aesthetic zone, you wear a temporary throughout.

Why the waiting is the treatment

An implant fails for two reasons: it never integrated, or the gum around it became inflamed later. The first is almost entirely determined by how patient everyone was in months one to three. Loading a fixture early feels like progress and is occasionally exactly the wrong thing.

We have placed roughly 640 implants since 2010. The ones that failed were, with two exceptions, in mouths where something else (smoking, untreated periodontal disease, uncontrolled diabetes) was working against them the whole time.

Questions worth asking anyone

Ask whether the quoted number includes the abutment and the crown, or only the fixture. Ask who mills the crown and where. Ask what the reviews cost. Ask what happens if it fails at year four.

Those four questions will tell you more about a practice than any before-and-after gallery.

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Written by the clinical team at Roanlight Dental. General information only. It is not a substitute for an examination. Call (503) 555-0118 if something hurts.