How Digital Planning and 3D Printing Can Make All-on-4 More Affordable
For the last 10 years, we’ve focused on delivering the very best care — not just for All-on-4, but for all the treatments we offer.
Because we take great care with the planning and aesthetics of each case, this kind of advanced treatment can be expensive. But what if there were a way to dramatically reduce both the treatment time and the cost, without compromising on quality?
Thanks to advances in digital planning and 3D printing, we’re now able to do just that.
3D Dental Scanning: The Foundation
3D dental scanning isn’t new — we’ve been using it for years, and it works brilliantly for smaller treatments like crowns and bridges. But when it comes to full-mouth treatments like All-on-4, it has been trickier.
Why? Mainly because when we lose all the teeth, we lose the fixed reference points that help us align the scans accurately. This can make full-mouth digital planning harder.
A Simple but Clever Solution
At a recent dental conference, we learned about a clever technique used by a leading US dental lab. On the day of your surgery, we place a small 3D-printed fixture in the roof of your mouth. This gives us a reliable reference point for our scans — even after the teeth are removed.
With this fixed reference point, our scan accuracy improves dramatically. And because everything is digital, we can collaborate with dental labs anywhere in the world.
For example: we can carry out the surgery here in the UK, send the scan files to a lab in the US, and have them design your new smile. The design comes back to us digitally, and we can 3D print a long-term bridge right here in our clinic.
Cost-Effective and Flexible
This type of 3D-printed PMMA (a type of durable plastic) bridge isn’t considered the final “gold standard” like a zirconia bridge — but it offers some great benefits.
Think of these teeth like a wear item. We can rebuild your smile so it looks fantastic, and if anything ever happens to the bridge, we can simply print another one in-house. In fact, we usually make two right from the start, so you have a spare just in case.
And here’s the best part: these bridges are extremely cost-effective — typically under £400 each. Compare that to a full arch zirconia bridge, which can cost around £8,000. Even if you replaced your PMMA bridge every year, it would take 20 years to match the cost of zirconia.
What About Zirconia?
Zirconia is still considered the gold standard for final bridges — it’s incredibly strong and long-lasting. The good news is, if you ever want to upgrade in the future, you can. But for many people, the cost savings and flexibility of PMMA bridges make this option very attractive, especially when spreading out the cost of treatment.
If you’d like to learn more about how this approach could work for you, please get in touch. We’re happy to chat and answer any questions!
