After a bit more research, I was able to find at least a few references to this sort of reconstruction. I figured I`d post it here for anyone who was interested. The NIH has an abstract of a study on their site that discusses this issue at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20134360.

Basically, it looks like this is used in cases where the mandibular defect is posterior, close to the TMJ. Apparently the results are very close to bone flap reconstructions.

I`m feeling a bit better after reading that, given how confused I was as to why this would have been done in my dad�s case, or what the results might be. At least I know it�s not an unprecedented thing!