Why Do Dental Implants Take So Long?

As an oral surgeon, I want to share with you a question I often get asked. Why does it take so long to replace a tooth with a dental implant? Well, it’s because your body has to do a little bit of the work too. When we replace a tooth a missing tooth with a dental implant and its final crown a couple of things have to happen. One we’ve got to let the area get healthy and allow the area to heal completely so we can have a stable area of bone in which to place that dental implant. Once we have that stable area of bone, we can only make bone heal so fast. It takes its amount of time. It’ll take two to three months. Then when we place that dental implant into that area, well it’s also now got to go through that same healing process to that same bone. So it’s going to take another eight to twelve weeks for it to fuse or basically firm up.