I had a private message about the dental stent I mentioned above, so here's part of my response for the public "record".

My friend had it done just a couple of months ago at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas (one of the Super-Centers); her dental oncologist provided the stents.

I had never heard of it either; I thought a stent was something they inserted into blood vessels to keep them open.

A Google search of "dental stent oral cancer" came up with this site from the UK (Do a Ctrl+F and search for "stent")

http://rdoc.org.uk/protocol.html

According to her, she came out of her 35 IMRT treatments with something like 50% saliva on one side and 75% on the other (heck, I didn't even get measured by anyone, altho after one year some is coming back). Despite the tone of the article above, I don't believe she had any of her teeth pulled.

Here's an even better link from the M D Anderson Center re: Stent

Age 67 1/2
Ventral Tongue SCC T2N0M0G1 10/05
Anterior Tongue SCC T2N0M0G2 6/08
Base of Tongue SCC T2N0M0G2 12/08
Three partial glossectomy (10/05,11/05,6/08), PEG, 37 XRT 66.6 Gy 1/06
Neck dissection, trach, PEG & forearm free flap (6/08)
Total glossectomy, trach, PEG & thigh free flap (12/08)
On August 21, 2010 at 9:20 am, Pete went off to play with the ratties in the sky.