Bone grafting and full-arch implants are the two situations where implant treatment expands beyond a single tooth. Both are covered here.
When bone grafting is needed
An implant needs a band of bone around it to stay in place over the years. If the jaw has lost bone to long-standing tooth loss, gum disease or a removed tooth, that bone has to be rebuilt before an implant can be placed.
- Socket preservation — grafting at the time a tooth is removed, to stop the ridge shrinking
- Horizontal and vertical augmentation — adding width or height where the ridge is deficient
- Sinus lift — raising the floor of the sinus cavity in the upper back jaw, the area most often too thin for an implant
Grafting is frequently done in the same appointment as implant placement. Where the defect is larger it is staged, with several months of healing before the implant goes in. Material may be your own bone, donor bone, or a synthetic substitute; your surgeon will explain which is used and why.
In China the fee is charged per implant site as a service fee, and the graft material itself is a separate consumable: CNY 1,138 for a simple site, 2,276 for a general one and 3,813 for a complex site that includes a lateral sinus lift.
Full-arch implants: All-on-4 and All-on-6
A fully edentulous jaw can be restored with a fixed bridge supported by four to eight implants. The All-on-4 approach places four implants angled to make the most of the existing bone, and can sometimes avoid grafting altogether. In suitable cases the temporary bridge is fitted within a few days of surgery, and the definitive bridge follows once healing is complete.
This is major surgery planned from a CT scan, so it is normally carried out in a hospital oral and maxillofacial surgery department rather than a general clinic. It is quoted per half-jaw: CNY 9,559 for full-arch fixture placement, plus 9,990 for the fixed occlusion reconstruction, with the implants and bridge billed separately as consumables.