Why can’t I get my implant tooth in one day like I see on TV?

I get that question asked a lot…I often see patients that come in wanting to get a tooth extracted and replaced with an implant.  They are often time perplexed that it cannot all be done in one day.  Patients see commercials on TV, advertising “teeth in a day” and they think that this also applies to their situation.  Please allow me to tell you why a single tooth extraction/implant is different from what you see in the “teeth in a day” commercials.

“Teeth in a day” applies to situations when a patient needs all of their upper or lower teeth removed and replaced with dental implants.  In this situation, extracting the teeth, putting in 4 or more implants and splinting them together with a dental bridge is possible.  This has to do with a fact that it’s a very stable engineering construct.  Think of a bridge with four or more pylons, splinted together with a rigid top.  All of the implants are stable in this situation. Or think of four legs of a chair with a seat splinting the four legs together—that’s a stable construct as well.

Now, take a single individual tooth, and a single implant that replaces it.  That’s only one leg of a chair.  You put a seat on that one leg of a chair, guess what happens—you fall over when you try to sit on it, or in other words, the implant fails because it’s not stable immediately after it’s placed.  If three months go by with the implant healing in the bone, then yes, you have a stable foundation for the dental tooth crown.  But you try to put a crown on immediately, and there is a huge risk that the implant will fail due to one wrong bite of pizza crust or an ice cube hitting the tooth the wrong way.

Written by Dmitry Tsvetov DDS MD