Thanks for the responses. Gary - my husband is seeing the dental oncologist who works with Moffitt Cancer Center patients in Tampa, FL. He apparently is not familiar with the Marx protocol for ORN that I found posted on another thread on this site by ChristineB and Art2Go. Or, isn't using it for some reason. Unfortunately neither was my husband nor I until I read that thread. We were familiar with HBO since the Moffit oncologist prescribed 30-40 dives a few months after his initial radiation therapy when his treated BOT area wouldn't completely heal. It worked great for that. I have wondered over the past 2 years why they couldn't use HBO for this ORN issue. I guess we trusted too much that the three people monitoring him were doing everything that could be done and didn't do due diligence on our own research.

The oral surgeon he was finally referred to a week ago is also the person that Moffitt CC uses for H&N patient issues like this. It appears from the oral surgeon's cat scan results and remarks and after reading other posts on ORN on this site that his oncologist and dentists have let this go to the point of it becoming a Stage II or even Stage III ORN issue. Very disappointing and scary.

The issue isn't that his tooth is problematic but that the underlying jawbone tissue around the socket area has dead tissue from 2-4 infections in that area over the past two years. The oral surgeon wants to give him HBO now and remove the dead jawbone tissue and is saying that he will have to remove at least 1 tooth in that area and possibly up to 4-5 teeth. He said if he finds that the jaw area is 'crumbly' when he does the surgery, he may have to insert a metal plate. Afterwards at another appt, my husband's regular dentist said that it probably wouldn't be the case, but it was possible that they would not be able to do anything to replace the teeth (i.e. bridge, implants, etc.)

Anyone else encounter anything like this?

Thanks very much!

Connie (and Jerry)