“Teeth in a day” is the phrase that sells All-on-4, and it is not untrue. In most cases a fixed temporary bridge is screwed onto the implants within 24 to 72 hours of surgery, so you genuinely do not leave without teeth. What the phrase leaves out is that the temporary is not the finished result, and the finished result requires a second trip several months later. Any clinic implying otherwise is describing a different treatment from the one it will deliver.
Trip one: five to seven days
Day 1 — Arrival. Transfer from the airport, rest. No appointment.
Day 2 — Assessment. Clinical examination and cone-beam CT. The plan you were sent remotely is checked against three-dimensional data: bone volume, nerve position, sinus floor, the angle each implant needs. If anything changes, you hear it now, before consent. Photographs and scans are taken for the temporary bridge.
Day 3 — Surgery. Remaining teeth are extracted and four or six implants placed, usually two to four hours per arch under local anaesthetic with sedation available. Insertion torque is measured on each implant; this is what determines whether immediate loading is safe.
Day 4 or 5 — Temporary bridge. If stability allows, the fixed temporary arch is fitted and adjusted. You are shown how to clean it and given the soft-diet protocol.
Day 6 or 7 — Review and departure. Healing checked, bite refined, records and instructions handed over.
The three to six months in between
This is when osseointegration happens: bone growing onto the implant surfaces and locking them in place. It cannot be accelerated, and it is why the definitive bridge cannot be fitted on trip one. During this period you wear the temporary, eat soft food for the first six to eight weeks, and send us photographs periodically so we can check the tissues remotely.
Trip two: seven to ten days
Longer than the first, which surprises people. The definitive bridge involves impressions or scans of the integrated implants, a bite registration, a try-in of the framework, an aesthetic try-in you approve, adjustments, and final fitting with the bite refined in every movement. Each of those steps needs laboratory time in between. Compressing them is possible and produces worse results, which is why we do not.
What recovery actually feels like
More than a single implant, less than people fear. Swelling and bruising peak on day two or three and can be pronounced — bruising sometimes extends down the neck, particularly in the lower jaw. Discomfort is managed with prescribed painkillers and is usually described as manageable rather than severe. Speech takes a few days to normalise with the temporary in place. Most patients feel socially presentable by day five.
Plan a genuinely quiet first week. Book the sightseeing for trip two.
Why the second trip is not optional
The temporary bridge is deliberately made in a lighter acrylic so it flexes slightly and protects healing implants. It is not built to last: it wears, it discolours, and used long-term it can fracture and transmit force badly to the implants. Clinics that offer to skip the second trip are either leaving you in a temporary indefinitely, or fitting a definitive bridge onto implants that have not yet integrated. Neither is a shortcut worth taking.
Total time commitment
Roughly two weeks of travel spread over four to seven months, plus the flights. For a treatment that replaces an entire arch of teeth with something fixed that you will use every day for fifteen years or more, that is a proportionate investment of time — and knowing it in advance is far better than discovering it halfway through.
Send a panoramic X-ray and we will tell you which approach suits your jaw, how many days each trip needs and what it costs — in writing, before you book a flight.