What is the Cost of Full Dental Implants?

$2000 – $100,000! Now that the sticker shock is out of the way let’s focus on what determines the cost of full mouth dental implants. The price of implants is variable depending on how many implants you need and the complexity. Some dental implant cases need bone and gum grafting and some do not. Other dentists use premium labs while others discount or even outsource to China! Some dental implants get to have teeth on the same day while some need multiple stages to complete over the course of a year.

This is a must watch video before having dental implants… Especially full arch all on 4 full mouth replacement implants.

Should a cheap dental implant last as long as a normal or expensive dental implant? Should you finance the cost of full implants?

These are all real, honest questions. Keep in mind that you are purchasing a body part. There is a lot riding on the success or failure of dental implants. Dental implants are not permanent. This is one of the many things I go over in this video.

Ramsey A. Amin, D.D.S.
Diplomate of the American Board of Oral Implantology /Implant Dentistry
Fellow-American Academy of Implant Dentistry

Transcript lightly edited for readability:

Hello, I’m Dr. Ramsey Amin, Burbank Dental Implants. So, a big question about dental implants is the cost. What’s the average cost of full dental implants? What’s the price to replace a tooth? How about a range? It’s a very difficult question to answer, and it’s got a lot to do with you and the dentist that you choose to do this. So, it’s a wide range. Let’s talk about single teeth all the way to the cost of all on four full mouth dental implants, or just the cost to replace a single tooth, or what the average is.

So, remember that you’re replacing a body part! You’re replacing a body part with a prosthetic replacement. A lot can go wrong, actually! For the most part, a screw goes into the bone. It replaces a tooth, right? So sometimes, we’re replacing just the tooth. Sometimes, we’re replacing part of the tooth and part of the gum. And other times, we’re replacing part of the tooth, part of the gum, and part of the bone. There’s differences in what the goal is to achieve so you don’t end up with a really long tooth that looks like a snaggle tooth that doesn’t look right.

Keep in mind that 30% to 35%, of what I do is redo dental implants. I hate to say it, but implants don’t last forever, and there’s a lot of misinformation out there, that it’s permanent. People say permanent because you don’t have to take them out unless they’re an overdenture, which you do have to take in and out. But, permanent means that they don’t have to come in and out, but permanent lasting a lifetime … Well, that depends on your age. So, the bottom line, just like anything in life, you get what you pay for, right?

I’m not the most expensive guy. I’m not the cheapest guy. But, I’ve had a lot of experience in this. I use an excellent lab. I make certain that the implant is in the proper position in the bone, for sure, and that it has enough gum and enough bone around it to last for a long time. And you also have to manage the way the tooth is made, how the bite comes together, the materials, because there’s multiple points for failure, not just in the bone or in the gum.

So, price of an implant…it can vary anywhere from $3,000 per tooth to upwards of $10,000 per tooth. Some teeth are very simple and just require no bone grafting, not even open the gum. Just go right through the gum, and others require extensive amount of stages over time.

Some implants, finish them in a single day. They take out the tooth, they put in the tooth, and patient leaves, and they’re done for the most part. Other cases require staging, right? And that increases the cost right there because there’s a lot more visits and it all can’t be done at once. So sometimes, we’ll have to place the implant first.

Let’s say, let’s go backwards for a second. Sometimes, we have to rebuild the bone first, and then place the implant a few months later, and then wait for a few months and make the tooth later on after another four months. So, it could be a year and a half before a tooth is replaced because we had to take bone from the jaw here and screw it up into here, and take some gum from the palette and add it there as well to make it bulletproof. Those are multiple stages. I wouldn’t call that streamlined treatment, but often that’s what it needs.

Sometimes, in some of my cases, I do all of that at once. Bone graft, extraction, implant, gum graft, and teeth all together. So, that requires a higher level of skill, training, a staff that can support, and a facility that has the ability to keep you safe during a long procedure, like an all on four. That’s typically anywhere from a three to six hour procedure, depending on difficulty, whether we need zygomatic dental implants that go into the cheek bone, or into the pterygoid.

It goes back to the upper wisdom teeth. So, and then it comes down to cost of materials and where you’re having treatment done, right? Just because you might be in Beverly Hills doesn’t mean it should be more expensive than somewhere in the middle of our great country.

It often just has to do with experience. So, that’s really what it comes down to. The care, so the desire to make it right, no matter what. Using good products and good bone, good membranes, help get a great result because even though you might be happy that you paid very little for an implant, you may be very upset to see in three to seven years that it’s losing bone. We have what’s called peri-implantitis. So, this is where we see big variations in costs, where a single tooth implant may be $3,000, or it may be $10,000.

Also on the full arch procedure, it can be as low as $20,000. It can be as much as $70,000 for a single arch, just one jaw. Again, depending on the complexity and materials, experience, this is not something you want to go cheap on.

I really can’t emphasize that enough. I’ve seen terrible things in my practice. I see some work that’s just … I can’t even believe what I see. It’s really just unheard of to see something. Sometimes, I think it’s done out of the country, but it’s done right here, just a few miles from my office in Burbank, California. So, bone grafting and gum grafting, that also comes at additional expense.

Being sedated and being kept safe. Obviously you want to live through this, right? In my office, we do IV sedation one to four times a day, and we’re very accustomed to it. It’s something I’m used to. My staff is used to. We’re trained in emergency procedures. It’s like if your mom or dad were having this procedure done, you’d want to keep them super safe and have a great outcome and not be redoing this again.

I have plenty of patients that have implants in their mouth that I placed 21 years ago, doing great, but I have a very, very high standard. And I can’t say that for everyone as well. The other thing that I also get concerned about, and there’s different models of treatment, some offices use an in-house lab. I support that as well. I have my own personal technician. But, they try to find ways to cut corners and skip steps. And instead of maybe milling something, it’s printed instead and it’s very weak in order to reduce the cost of full dental implants and make it seem like you’re getting this new thing.

So even though the cost of the implant may be less, they have to be cutting corners somewhere. And sometimes, a lot of in-house or maybe traveling, a traveling dentist that just comes in and out of the office, to do your work isn’t always there.

Again, I support that as well. It doesn’t work for me. I haven’t seen complex care done well when the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. In my office, I provide all treatment just by me and my team. The right hand knows what the left hand’s doing. The cost you’re given is the cost that it is. There’s no secret things or corners cut, and an excellent lab is used.

So again, I guess the point of all of this is replacing teeth or a full mouth replacement is something you really want to study and be careful with. There’s a lot of, billboard ads. They have a dental implant for $399. Like credit cards with 0% percent interest. It’s something just to bait you with, like a marketing ploy!

And then, they have a bunch of add on procedures. Oh, well, that’s actually for the implant itself. That doesn’t actually include us putting it in, and then we have to get you numb. And then, we have to charge you to open your gum. They start to stack on what we call “bundling of fees” to make the implant more expensive , because if you’re seeing these … If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

In fact, there was a clinic here in Southern California that was closed down due to deaths that happened in that office and problems with sedation and not being monitored. I actually saw a lot of the patients afterwards to care for them.

So again, I would say to be careful how the tooth is extracted beforehand. Scanning, is that all included? Again, I stand behind what I do. I love what I do. I’m privileged to do what I do. I can’t speak the same for everybody out there. Most dentists are really excellent people. Some are specialized specifically in this procedure, and some just dabble in it. And I would say just do your due diligence. And I hope this has helped you review the cost of what an implant is. Really, the cost of full dental implants is knowing that it’s done right and that peace of mind is priceless.