Zygomatic Dental Implants — Downey, CA
Told you don’t qualify?
Zygomatic implants change the answer.
If another office said you need a year of grafting first, I have another way. I anchor in your cheekbone, skip the graft, and you walk out with fixed teeth in one surgical day.
The Hopeless Case
When is zygomatic the answer?
A meaningful share of the patients who come to me for full-arch consultation have been told somewhere else that they aren’t a candidate — usually because of severe upper-jaw bone loss after years in a denture, or because a previous full-arch attempt failed and left them with even less bone than they started with. The alternative they were offered was usually 9 to 12 months of staged bone grafting, sinus lifts, and waiting — with no promise the bone would even take. A lot of them gave up on the idea entirely. I don’t want that to be your answer.
Zygomatic implants change that conversation, and they’re the most specialized branch of our full guide to dental implants. Instead of trying to rebuild the maxilla through grafting, I anchor the prosthesis in the zygomatic bone — the part of your cheekbone you can feel under your eye. Zygomatic bone is dense, cortical, and essentially never resorbs even after decades of tooth loss. It’s the same reason an orthopedic surgeon would anchor a facial reconstruction plate in the zygoma rather than in a resorbing maxilla. When the upper jaw simply isn’t there anymore, you anchor where the bone still is.
I typically place two zygomatic implants — one per cheekbone — combined with two to four conventional anterior implants in the front of the maxilla, where most patients still have usable native bone. The result is the same full-arch fixed bridge as a conventional All-on-6 full-arch restoration, but anchored in bone that doesn’t need to be rebuilt first. This is the dividing line worth understanding: if you only want a loose lower denture to stop rocking, mini implants stabilize the denture at a fraction of the cost — zygomatic is for the patient who wants fixed teeth back when the upper jaw can no longer hold a standard implant at all. If you still have enough bone for standard implants — sometimes after a targeted bone graft — that less invasive path is usually the better one, and I’ll tell you so. Zygomatic is for the cases where rebuilding the maxilla isn’t realistic. Where it is the right answer, it means same-day fixed teeth, no grafting, and no twelve-month wait.
Who qualifies
Three patient profiles we treat every month.
Zygomatic is targeted: it’s the right answer for severe maxillary atrophy, not for routine full-arch cases. Here’s where it fits.
Severe maxillary atrophy
Long-term upper dentures, full-mouth tooth loss for 10+ years, or pneumatized sinuses that have collapsed your residual ridge. When CBCT shows under 5 mm of vertical bone in the posterior maxilla, standard implants with sinus lifts often aren’t feasible. Zygomatic anchors bypass that bone entirely.
Failed full-arch elsewhere
A failed All-on-4 or All-on-6 from another office usually leaves you with less bone than you started with. A large share of the zygomatic cases I take on are revisions like this — and a resorbed upper jaw with no native bone left is exactly the situation zygomatic anchorage was designed for.
Told you need 12+ months of grafting
If another office quoted you a year of sinus lifts, block grafts, and waiting before they’d even place implants — zygomatic is the alternative. Same-day teeth. No graft. No staging. The treatment compresses into one surgical day plus one final-prosthesis appointment 4–6 months later.
The Timeline Comparison
How does zygomatic compare to 12 months of bone grafting?
Grafting for severe maxillary atrophy is usually two or three surgical stages — sinus lift, block graft, then implants — spread across 9 to 18 months, with a denture in between and a fresh failure risk at every stage. Zygomatic compresses that into one surgical day plus a final appointment 4 to 6 months later, with fixed teeth from the start. The trade-off: it’s a more advanced surgery, so it’s reserved for the cases that truly need it. If your bone loss is moderate rather than severe, a graft-then-implant plan may still be the cleaner route.
The Conventional Path
Sinus lift, block graft, then implants
- Month 0–1: Bilateral sinus lift surgery. Heal 6 months.
- Month 6–7: Iliac crest or ramus block graft. Heal 4–6 months.
- Month 10–12: Implant placement. Integrate 4 months.
- Month 14–18: Final prosthesis. Total timeline 14–18 months.
- You wear a denture this entire time. Failed graft = restart.
The Zygomatic Path
One surgical day, fixed teeth same afternoon
- Week 0: Consult, full-skull CBCT, digital plan.
- Week 2: Surgery + same-day temporary fixed bridge.
- Month 1–4: Integration. Soft diet, fixed temporary in place.
- Month 4–6: Final monolithic zirconia. Done.
- You never wear a denture. Fixed teeth from day one.
Why It’s Rare
Why do so few practices offer zygomatic implants?
Only a small fraction of US dental implant practices offer zygomatic at all. The technique requires surgical training that isn’t part of standard implant residency — it’s a separate course, typically taken at advanced surgical centers or post-graduate programs. I’m a UCLA-trained DDS, and zygomatic technique was part of that training. It’s the kind of surgery you have to truly understand before you do it: the biology, the angulation, the mechanics. Never trust a dentist who’s working blind.
The infrastructure barrier is the second reason it’s rare. Zygomatic cases need in-house CBCT capable of imaging the full mid-face, surgical planning software to design the 30–55 mm trajectory, and 3D-printed guides to translate that plan into the operating room. A guide gives me millimeter-to-millimeter angle control and tells me exactly how deep and how large an implant I can safely seat — which decides the mechanical forces the implant carries for the rest of its life. Most offices outsource one or all of those steps. I do every one of them in our Downey suite.
There’s one more thing I do that I won’t skip: I splint the whole arch over a titanium bar beneath the zirconia. Zirconia on its own is brittle — a crack can run straight through it — so the titanium core stops a fracture before it crosses and braces every implant against every other one in three dimensions. (That marriage of the two materials is also why, on a full arch, the zirconia-versus-titanium question is rarely either-or — you want both.) That cross-arch stabilization is a large part of why a well-planned full arch holds up, and it’s the same engineering behind every full-mouth implant reconstruction I do. Every zygomatic case I plan is done digitally and executed with a surgical guide — the only way I’ll do them, because the published complication rate is low precisely when the case is planned and guided.
The workflow
Five steps. One surgical day. Fixed teeth that afternoon.
- 01
consultation with full-skull CBCT
A standard dental CBCT shows the jaw. A zygomatic case needs to see the cheekbone, the orbital floor, the maxillary sinus, and the infratemporal fossa — the entire mid-face. We do this scan in-house ($350 value, included in your consult fee). Dr. Qiu reviews the scan with you in the same appointment and confirms zygomatic feasibility on the same day.
- 02
Digital planning and surgical guide fabrication
Zygomatic implants are 30–55 mm long (compared to 8–14 mm for standard implants) and travel through the maxilla into the dense cortical bone of the cheekbone. The angle has zero margin for error. We plan the trajectory digitally on your CBCT and 3D-print a surgical guide. Two weeks from consult to surgical day.
- 03
Surgery day: 4–6 implants, immediate teeth
Under IV sedation. Typically 2 zygomatic implants (one per cheekbone) plus 2–4 conventional anterior implants where you still have native bone. The whole arch is restored with a temporary fixed bridge the same afternoon — you walk out with teeth that don’t come out. The surgery itself runs 3–4 hours.
- 04
Soft diet, 4-month integration window
Soft diet for 8 weeks while the implants integrate. We see you at week 1, 4, 8, 12, and 16. The temporary bridge stays in place the entire time. No removable denture, no “wait six months and we’ll see” — you have functional teeth on day one and they only get better from there.
- 05
Final monolithic zirconia at month 4–6
Once integration is verified, we replace the temporary acrylic bridge with a final monolithic zirconia full-arch prosthesis. Designed to match your natural teeth. Covered under our 10-year biological warranty — implants, arch, and surgical labor included — when seen at twice-yearly hygiene visits. Single 90-minute appointment. From that point forward, you live with these teeth like you would with natural teeth — normal chewing function for most foods, no adhesives, no removal.
What the data actually says
“Zygomatic implants anchor into the cheekbone instead of the upper jaw. They restore an upper arch in patients with severe maxillary bone loss who would otherwise face a year of grafting. Only a small fraction of US dentists place them — I do, with every case CBCT-planned and guided.”
The ADA reports a 90 to 95% implant success rate over 10 years when placement protocols are followed, and the AAID places overall implant success above 97% in healthy non-smokers — a benchmark a well-indicated, digitally planned zygomatic case can approach over the same horizon. A 2019 systematic review in the Journal of Dentistry puts 10-year implant survival above 90%, and the AAOMS describes implant surgery as highly predictable in trained hands. The zygomatic literature consistently shows low major-complication rates when surgery is CBCT-guided — which is the only way I do them.
Related treatments
Explore related treatments
All-on-6
When standard bone is available, six implants per arch is the workhorse full-arch option.
Bone graft for implants
Less invasive bone augmentation when the deficit is moderate, an alternative path to zygomatic surgery.
Full-mouth reconstruction
The full-bite rebuild plan that pairs with zygomatic and standard implants for complex cases.
Frequently asked
About zygomatic implants
- Zygomatic implants are longer dental implants (30–55 mm) that anchor in the zygomatic bone (your cheekbone) instead of the maxilla (your upper jaw). They bypass the resorbed upper-jaw bone entirely and engage the dense cortical bone of the cheekbone, which essentially never resorbs. For patients with severe upper-jaw bone loss who have been told they need a year of grafting before implants, zygomatic skips that step.
Take 2 minutes
Were you told you don’t qualify? Let’s look again.
Bring your previous records and CBCT if you have them. Dr. Qiu personally reviews every zygomatic candidate within one business day and tells you on day one whether the case is feasible.
Or call (562) 923-4538
Your Implant Dentist
The doctor in the room is the one who does everything.
When you book a consult, you're not meeting a sales coordinator. You're meeting me. I'll personally read your CBCT, draft your treatment plan, and quote your exact price — start to finish.
— Dr. Henry Qiu, DDS
UCLA Trained · DIO Implant Faculty & Instructor