The All On 4: A Comprehensive Look At A Breakthrough Dental Implant Protocol, Part 1

By Author: Jack De Richards
Total Articles: 98
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All on 4 Dental Implants: Tooth Loss in the United States


There’s nothing like a few shocking statistics to bring the reality of oral health and healthcare in the United States home. According to the Surgeon General’s Report on Health, by age 50, Americans have lost an average of 12 teeth, including the third molars. Even more shocking, the Center for Disease Control found that nearly 30% of adults over the age of 65 have lost all of their original teeth! The causes of tooth loss are varied, but most frequently, it is the result of tooth decay and periodontal (gum) disease. These, in turn, are caused by poor lifelong oral hygiene and bad lifestyle choices and habits, such as smoking, a poor diet, excessive drinking and drug abuse. Having said this, it is not the aim of this four-part article series to dwell on tooth loss itself, but rather the solution to it.


The All on 4 Dental Implant Protocol


In 1993, European implantologist, Dr. Paulo Malo innovated a dental implant technique for complete oral rehabilitation that enables oral surgeons to provide patients ...
... with a sophisticated solution to edentulism (not having a single original adult tooth left) and rampant tooth loss. What set this protocol apart from traditional dental implant techniques was its unprecedented treatment time and ability to provide tooth replacement solutions to patients that had previously been told they were not candidates for dental implants. The technique is the ‘All on 4’ and has been generating serious waves in the fields of oral rehabilitation and dental implantology ever since its conception in the early 1990’s! In this four-part article series, we shall be taking a comprehensive look at the breakthrough All on 4 dental implant protocol, looking at aspects including how it works to its incredible benefits and advantages over traditional tooth replacement technologies.


What are All on 4 Dental Implants?


All on 4 dental implants, as the name suggests, essentially consists of a non-removable prosthetic dental bridge that is ‘anchored’ in the mouth using only four titanium implant screws. The dental bridge resembles an entire arch of teeth, which is carefully fabricated to be virtually indistinguishable from a full set of natural, healthy teeth. Four dental implants are inserted at carefully selected locations in the mouth to provide the bridge with full and uncompromised support. In fact, it is the careful placement and angulation of these supporting implants that enables oral surgeons to overcome problems that traditionally faced edentulous and near-edentulous patients, namely bone loss in the jaw. It is this feat of All on 4 dental implants that enables patients to get a brand new set of non-removable, immediately functional and aesthetic teeth in a single day, at a single location and with only a single surgery!


All on 4 Dental Implants: Stay Tuned


In our next article installment, part 2 of 4, we shall be describing in detail how the procedure behind the placement of All on 4 dental implants works. In part 3, we shall explain why All on 4 dental implants offer patients a far more sophisticated and comprehensive solution to tooth loss than traditional tooth replacement technologies, such as dental bridges and removable dentures, or false teeth. And in the final article installment of the series, we shall be looking at the benefits of this breakthrough surgical protocol over traditional dental implant techniques.