Living with the All-on-4 temporary bridge: three months

What you leave with on the day

You leave the clinic on the day of surgery with a fixed provisional bridge screwed onto the implants, so you never walk around without teeth. It is acrylic, lighter than the final bridge and deliberately less refined, because it is a working prototype. It is not removable at home, it photographs like teeth, and it lets the soft tissue heal into the shape the final bridge will follow. Living with it for three months is the part patients underestimate.

The diet rule that decides whether it works

For the first eight weeks nothing you eat should need a bite strong enough to tear. Soft protein, eggs, fish, minced meat, pasta and well-cooked vegetables, cut small and chewed on both sides at once. Bread crusts, apples, nuts and steak are the four that break provisional bridges. This is not fussiness: the implants are integrating, and a heavy off-axis load in week three is the most common single cause of early failure in a full arch.

Speech, and why it corrects itself

Most patients lisp slightly for the first one to two weeks. The tongue has been shaping sounds against a different palate profile for years and has to relearn its contact points, and reading aloud for ten minutes a day speeds that up noticeably. If one specific sound is still wrong after three weeks, tell us: it is usually a thickness issue in the bridge that the technician can adjust, and that adjustment is then built into the final prosthesis.

What happens at month three

After three to four months the implants are integrated and the provisional comes off. New impressions are taken against the healed gum, and the final bridge is made in stronger material with a precise fit. The All-on-4 package includes the fixed provisional; the final prosthesis is itemised alongside it in your written plan, so nothing is discovered at the end. Most patients return for a five to seven day visit for this stage.

The Ones People Actually Ask.