What an implant actually is
An implant replaces the part of the tooth nobody sees. A titanium post is placed into the jawbone, left to fuse with it over a few months, and then restored with a crown made to match the teeth either side of it.
That fusion is the reason an implant behaves differently from a bridge or a denture. It loads the bone the way a natural root does, which is also why the bone around it stops shrinking — the quiet problem that follows every tooth you lose and do not replace.
Full-mouth rehabilitation and All-on-4
Replacing every tooth in an arch does not take an implant per tooth. An All-on-4 rehabilitation carries a full fixed arch on four carefully angled implants, using the bone that is still there rather than requiring a graft to build back bone that is not.
It is a bigger undertaking than a single implant and it is planned as one case from the start — surgery, healing and the final prosthesis sequenced together, by the same team, in the same building.
Why it is planned before anything is touched
Every implant case here starts with imaging and an assessment of the bone that will hold it. Where there is not enough, that is dealt with first.
It means some patients are told the answer is not an implant, or not yet. That is a better conversation to have at the start than eight months in.
Who does the work
Implants at Smile Line are placed by clinicians who do this specifically: the practice's founder, whose own clinical work centres on implants, and a consultant maxillofacial surgeon — FCPS, and head of the maxillofacial unit at CDA Hospital — for the cases that are surgically demanding.