Saturation of tissues with O2 has proven to assist healing, which of course is what is necessary for a titanium implant to osteointegrated into bone. There are published studies that show some value of this prior to placement and during healing of surgically placed dental implants. If you still have your anterior teeth, the logical thing would be to have an appliance that is partially tooth born and partially ridge borne. (A chromium cobalt metal framework with clasps and an acrylic posterior portion supporting denture teeth.) That is something that is common, routinely successful, affordable, and does not run the risk of poor healing or failure such as with implants. You may even end up with a design that incorporates all three modes of retention and load bearing. Implants are not contraindicated in radiated patients; they just have a significantly lower success rate. The issue for me is when they fail to integrate properly, due to the vascularization issues or the poor quality of the bone graft, the patient can actually loose bone as a by-product. Poor quality of the graft bone does not refer to anything more than the density of grafts vs. normal bone. Even in normal bone, particularly in the very posterior of the mandible, there are issues that make integration of implants difficult. Iin this location it is considered poor quality since it is too dense.

Brian, stage 4 oral cancer survivor. OCF Founder and Director. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.