Salvatore L Ruggiero, Bhoomi Mehrotra, Tracey J Rosenberg, Stephen L Engroff
PURPOSE: Bisphosphonates are widely used in the management of metastatic disease to the bone and in the treatment of osteoporosis. We were struck in the past 3 years with a cluster of patients with necrotic lesions in the jaw who shared 1 common clinical feature, that they had all received chronic bisphosphonate therapy. The necrosis that was detected was otherwise typical of osteoradionecrosis, an entity that we rarely encountered at our center, with less than 2 patients presenting with a similar manifestation per year...
May 2004: Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery