Have been dealing with oral cancer since 1992.Have had 8 surgeries and just completed 32 radiation treatments on the right side of my mouth and neck.On Thurs April 26,I broke my femur and had to have a partial hip replacement procedure.Is anyone aware of any research that shows radiation can have damaging effects on the body's bones and cause them to break.I realize not being able to eat correctly,or keep active due to the fatigue and the inability to swallow the large calcium/D pill contributed to the break.Cant take rx's for osteo becahse of side effects. Any insights will be appreciated.

I used the search engines on this site and also www.ask.com. There is a wealth of info on this subject. Once you get to your chosen search engine type in "Does radiation weaken bones?" then click search. Bones get brittle as we age. Poor diet and radiation also can have an effect.

The fragility of ossseos structures is significantly limited to the area which is radiated. There is little evidence that radiation impacts bone health or structure remote from the area being treated. I did Petey's search above just out of curiosity, and personally did not find its results helpful. There are tons of articles which have aspects of that question in them, but sifting through them did not yeild me an answer related to remote involvement, which was essentially the question.

Thanks for the quick responses.

One thing to be aware of, though, (at least this is my udnerstanding, and I'm not a doctor) is that if you get osteoporosis, one class of meds that is given for them, bisphosphonates, can cause and increased likelihood of osteonecrosis of the jaw. This is in patients who have NOT had their jaw radiated and of course if you HAVE had oral radiation you are even more vulnerable to that happening anyway so taking bisphosphonates for osteoporosis may not be an option for those of us who've been zapped.

Nelie

Link related to this:

http://www.ada.org/prof/resources/topics/osteonecrosis.asp

Thought I would weigh in on the subject of osteonecrosis of the jaw (BON) caused by bisphosphonates, since Nelie brought it up.

The only case of this that we have seen in our practice, was actually my partner who had been on Zometa (Intravenous) for treatment of his cancer, multiple myeloma. As a result of this problem, he needed a tooth extracted and had a terrible time with healing after the extraction. This actually occurred before these findings hit the journals and we had no idea what was going on.

The incidence of the oral bisphosphonates, eg Fosamax, causing similar problems has been so miniscule, that it has not changed the thinking about women continuing with these forms of the drug. We have done extractions, placed implants etc., for women that have been on these oral drugs for years and years, with no signs of a problem.

Jerry

As

Right, but given that people who have had their jaw bones radiated are vulnerable to ORN anyway, it strikes me that for those folks, bisphosphonates might be really risky. Does it seem the same to you, Jerry? This is an issue for me for multiple reasons. First, all the women in my family have had osteoporosis and both my grandmothers had more than one hip fracture as a result. Second, if god forbid my breast cancer should ever recur in my bones these drugs are a primary way of treating that. And I worry that I may not be able to be treated in either case because of the relationship between bisphosphonates and osteonecrosis of the jaw.

My aunt (a nurse for decades) has done some reading up on this too since she was prescribed bisphosphonates last year and apprently the way they work is they keep the body from sloughing off dead bone cells. So the bones test at having more bone volume because of this. But living bone tissue is not increased. And evidently as far as she can tell, there is no direct research on whether bones whose density is increased through this method are actually less brittle. And you have to wonder if they are since what is being retained is not living tissue (which is probably also why osteonecrosis can occur so easily).

If I have any of this wrong, please correct me. Again, I am not a doctor, just a reasonably smart person trying to learn as much as I can about somehting that may affect my future.

Nelie