“Teeth in a day.” It’s a phrase you’ve probably seen on a billboard or an Instagram ad, and it’s the reason a lot of patients walk into an implant consult asking about same-day implants specifically. The short answer is — yes, it’s a real procedure, it can work, and for a narrow slice of patients it’s a genuinely good option. But it’s marketed far more aggressively than the clinical evidence supports, and at Biltoft we generally recommend the traditional staged approach. Here’s why.
What “same-day implants” actually means
The terminology is a bit slippery, so let’s pin it down.
A traditional dental implant is placed in two or three stages. The titanium post goes into the jawbone first. Then the bone is given three to six months to grow into the surface of the implant — a process called osseointegration. Only once the bone has properly locked onto the implant do we load it with an abutment and a crown.
A “same-day implant” — the clinical term is immediate loading — compresses this. The implant goes in and a temporary crown is fitted on the same day, or within 48 hours. The bone still needs to osseointegrate underneath, but instead of a healing cap sitting quietly in your gum for three months, a tooth-shaped temporary sits on top while the healing happens around it.
It’s worth being clear that “same-day implants” is not the same thing as All-on-4 style full-arch treatments, even though both sometimes get bundled under the same marketing label. Full-arch immediate-load cases are their own world, with their own rules. What we’re talking about here is the single-tooth or two-tooth situation where someone’s asking, “Can I walk out today with a new tooth in the gap?”
What the evidence actually says
This is where the honest conversation has to happen. A Cochrane systematic review looking at randomised trials comparing immediate loading to conventional loading found no statistically significant difference in first-year implant failure or prosthesis failure rates between the two approaches.
So if a patient reads that and thinks “great, same-day is just as good” — you can see why. That’s the headline.
But the authors of that review also noted two things that don’t make it onto billboards. First, the evidence was rated low quality, mostly because of how the underlying trials were designed. Second — and this is the important bit — the results only hold when cases are carefully selected. In other words, same-day implants can match traditional implants, if you pick the right patient, the right tooth, and the right clinician.
The problem is that “if” doesn’t survive marketing. A practice running a Teeth In A Day promotion has a commercial incentive to fit patients into the same-day pathway. That’s not a shot at anyone specifically — it’s just how aggressive marketing changes case selection.
Who is actually a good candidate for same-day implants
In the clinical literature, the patient profile that does well with immediate loading is pretty specific:
- A non-smoker. Smoking compromises healing at every stage and makes immediate loading much riskier.
- Good general health. Uncontrolled diabetes, some autoimmune conditions, recent head-and-neck radiotherapy, and certain bone-density medications push against same-day options.
- Dense, healthy bone at the site. If the scan shows soft or thin bone, immediate loading is a poor choice.
- Good primary stability at placement. The implant has to lock into the bone firmly when it goes in. Your clinician measures this intra-operatively. If it’s not stable enough, the plan has to switch to traditional loading mid-surgery.
- A forgiving bite position. Front teeth — where aesthetics matter and biting forces are lighter — are much better candidates than back molars that grind through chewing every day.
- The willingness to protect the temporary. Weeks of soft food, no crusty bread, no biting into apples, no ice. If that sounds like torture, traditional loading is the happier path.
If any of those are soft, the risk-reward shifts away from same-day and toward the staged approach. And a lot of the patients I see in Murwillumbah — people who want the most reliable outcome, not the quickest — fit the traditional profile much better.
Why we generally recommend the traditional staged approach
A few reasons, and none of them are about us being old-fashioned.
It’s more forgiving. The staged approach gives the bone a quiet few months to integrate with the implant without any biting forces disturbing it. In Murwillumbah you are not going to remember every single meal to baby a temporary crown for six weeks. The staged approach forgives the day you forget and bite into a rye roll.
Case selection is less critical. A wider range of patients and bone conditions do well with staged loading. If something unexpected turns up mid-procedure — softer bone than the scan suggested, lower primary stability — the default plan still works.
The long-term numbers look the same or better. Cochrane said no significant difference in the first year, but the real question for a patient putting $5,000 to $6,000 into a single tooth is not year one — it’s year ten, year fifteen. The traditional approach has the longer, deeper track record.
Revisions are less common. When an immediately-loaded implant fails, you usually have to remove the implant, graft the site, wait for it to heal, and start again. That adds cost, time, and another surgery. Traditional loading reduces that risk.
If you’d like to see the full sequence we follow at Biltoft, the step-by-step implant process guide walks through every visit and timeline.
If you’re weighing up the options for a missing tooth and want a straight conversation — no pressure and no pitch — you’re welcome to book a consult with me at Biltoft.
When same-day loading could make sense
This isn’t a blanket “we never do it” piece — it’s a “we’re honest about when it’s warranted” piece. There are genuine cases where immediate loading is the right clinical choice.
The clearest one is a front tooth in a good-bone site on a healthy non-smoker where walking around for three months with a visible gap or a removable flipper is socially or professionally impractical. If the bone is dense, the primary stability is excellent at placement, and the bite is cooperative, loading the implant the same day with a carefully built out-of-bite temporary is a reasonable plan.
The other one is immediate placement in a healthy extraction socket — where a tooth is being removed and the implant goes straight into the socket, sometimes with a temporary on top. In the right patient, this preserves bone and reduces total treatment time. But again, strict case selection.
For anyone who doesn’t tick those boxes, the staged approach is almost always the safer call.
What “same-day implants” marketing doesn’t tell you
A few things that get glossed over in the brochure:
- The temporary crown is not a normal functional tooth. It’s cosmetic, space-holding, and deliberately kept out of heavy bite. You cannot eat normally on it for weeks.
- If the implant doesn’t achieve enough primary stability in theatre, a responsible clinician will change the plan on the spot and switch to traditional loading. If that option isn’t on the table at a same-day clinic, that’s a red flag.
- The “day” in same-day only covers the first visit. You still need an abutment and a final crown fitted later — usually three to six months down the track once the implant has integrated. The full treatment is not actually done in a day.
- Costs are not usually lower. Same-day implants tend to price at the higher end, not the lower end, because of the added planning and the temporary crown work.
If you want the honest candidate-selection picture for implants in general — not just same-day — our piece on who’s a good candidate for dental implants goes into the medical and dental factors in more detail, and our full dental implants guide covers the overall service at Biltoft.
How we approach it at Biltoft
Straightforward. We don’t run a marketed same-day implant programme, and we don’t do in-house IV sedation or general anaesthetic — every implant at Biltoft is placed under local anaesthetic, which is sufficient for almost all single-tooth cases. If a patient genuinely needs sedation, or presents a complex case that would benefit from a specialist surgical setting, we refer to a specialist oral surgeon.
For the small number of cases where immediate loading is clinically sensible, we’ll say so and talk you through it. For everyone else — which is most people — the staged approach is what we recommend, with a written treatment plan, realistic timelines, and no surprises. Single-tooth implants at Biltoft sit at $5,000 to $6,000 per tooth all-inclusive, whether the loading is immediate or staged. The price doesn’t change based on marketing.
Individual results vary with any implant procedure, and nothing in this article is a substitute for a proper assessment in the chair. But if you’re being pitched same-day implants elsewhere and want a second opinion, we’re happy to give you one.
If you’d like to talk through your situation specifically — what’s missing, what your bone looks like, whether same-day or staged makes more sense for you — give us a call on (02) 6672 1980 or book an appointment online.
Frequently asked questions
What are 'same-day implants'? +
It's the marketing name for immediate loading — where the implant post is placed and a temporary crown is fitted on the same day, instead of waiting three to six months for the bone to integrate before loading the implant with a crown. The implant itself still needs to osseointegrate over the following months; the difference is that you leave the surgery with a tooth-shaped thing in the gap rather than a healing cap.
Do same-day implants have the same success rate as traditional implants? +
A 2013 Cochrane systematic review of randomised trials found no statistically significant difference in implant failure or prosthesis failure between immediate and conventional loading in the first year. The authors also noted the evidence was low quality and case selection matters a lot. In plain terms — they can work, but the margin for error is smaller, and the wrong case can fail.
Why does Biltoft usually recommend the traditional staged approach? +
It's forgiving. The bone gets a quiet three-to-six-month window to integrate with the titanium post without any biting forces disturbing it. Case selection is less critical, revisions are less common, and the workflow suits a country practice where we want predictable long-term outcomes more than we want marketing-friendly timelines. We'd rather an implant that still looks great in fifteen years than one that went in fast.
Who is actually a candidate for same-day implants? +
Non-smokers with good general health, dense healthy bone at the implant site, good initial stability when the implant is placed, a bite that doesn't hammer the temporary crown, and usually a front-tooth position where the aesthetics matter more than heavy chewing. Out-of-heavy-bite is the key phrase. Back molars are poor candidates.
Can I eat normally on a same-day implant? +
No. The temporary crown on a same-day implant is deliberately kept out of heavy bite and you'll be on a soft diet for weeks — no crusty bread, no steak, no ice, no biting into apples. If the temporary gets loaded too hard, the implant underneath can micro-move and fail to integrate. The point of the temporary is cosmetic and space-holding, not function.
Does Biltoft offer same-day implants? +
We don't run a marketed same-day implant service. On rare occasions, for the right patient with the right case, immediate loading is the sensible call — and we'll say so. But we don't push it as a default. Most patients get a better long-term result from the staged approach, and that's what we recommend unless there's a clear clinical reason to do otherwise.