My husband finished all of his radiation and chemo treatments in December of 2008. He went for a dental check-up yesterday and the dentist said that one of his back teeth on the radiated side was slightly loose. My husband's surgeon and radiologist told him previously that it was dangerous to have a tooth extracted after treatments due to lose of blood flow to the area. Has anyone else dealt with this? Can you offer suggestions? Thank you.

There are several folks that will be able to offer their personal experiences with extractions. Yes this needs to be done with care. Most of the time HBO (Hyperbaric Oxygen) treatments will be done to improve the blood flow in the area first.

I suggest discussing this with a specialized dentist (one very familiar with radiated patients) or oral surgeon before having any extraction.

I have had experience and can help you. Basically what happens is that radiation makes it so things dont heal properly. Thru having the hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) treatments, it forces oxygen into your system to promote better blood flow which the make healing faster and easier. Ive done 85 and it is the easiest treatment I did. HBO isnt available everwhere. It is necessary to do this to prevent further problems and surgeries.

Christine

Does HBO help with healing other head and neck areas after radiation?

Thanks
Sandy S.

The answer, Sandy is YES!

Its for wound care, arthritis, etc. Ive seen alot of diabetic people who have lost their foot at HBO. Or the nursing home patients who have severe bed sores there too. Studies are now saying it can help autism, pain, fatigue even anemia. It worked wonders for me.

skp,

I had a very similar situation to the one you are describing involving your husband. About a month prior to my Dx of Base of Tongue right side, I had undergone a major dental project involving the replacement of a lower right side 4 tooth bridge with my wisdom tooth serving as the rear anchor. Several months following my Tx I began to experience very slight pain from the area around this wisdom tooth. I went to my general dentist who in his 30 plus years of practice had had very little experience with a head/neck cancer patient and the resulting problems from treatment. He did take an xray and was shocked to see that there was virtually no bone present holding the widsom tooth. He said probably the forward anchor tooth was all that was actually holding the entire bridge in place. This is then when the headaches began.

Bottom line, I went under the care of an Oral Surgeon who was very familiar with the situation and he prescribed that I undergo 20 HBO treatments prior to his removing the wisdom tooth followed by 10 more afterwards. It was explained to me that this would lessen the possiblity of contracting ORN from roughly a 25 to 30% chance to less than 5%. It just so happened that I ended up falling into the aforementioned 5% with ORN after all. Not only that but the HBO treatments caused permanent damage to my previous perfect distance vision but corrected my near vision to where I no longer need magnifier reading glasses. I had been using 2.50 power readers for several years.

I guess I have mixed feelings regarding the results I received from the HBO treatments although my Oral Surgeon seems to think we have the ORN under control and that it could have been worse without the HBO treatments. I guess there is no way to know for sure.

Bill D.

I also have a problem re teeth. I finished tx two years ago and three months ago one of my teeth seemed to be loose (my bottom teeth have been painful since tx), Anyway the tooth fell out with a bit of help. There was very little bleeding, but now another tooth is loose, does this mean that they all might fall out????
William, I experienced the exact same problems with my eyes as you have, I have been wearing reading glasses for 12 years,and had perfect distance vision, but suddenly about eighteen months ago my distance vision went, but I could read without readers, but I have never had any HBO. My sight continued to deteriorate until I could hardly see so had a check up, and was told I had cataracts and that they could have been caused by the radiation. I also had a minor detachment of the retina??? I have had one of my eyes operated on and it is so weird especially being on the computer with one eye with near perfect vision and the other one almost blind.

I would really like to hear if any one else is having teething troubles.

Margie

Hi Margie. I lost all of my teeth due to radiation. My teeth were ok but not the ebst before radiation. After radiation they started to shift and were all loose. My teeth had been pretty straight but became all twisted and crooked from shifting so much. I could barely eat because they got so bad. I did lot of HBO and in March had the teeth all surgically removed. It will take 6 months to heal before I am allowed to get dentures fitted. I wish you the best of luck with yoru teeth. If they are loose you may have the same problems I did, but I hope not. Its not easy going without teeth.

Dear Christine, thanks for your good wishes. I have just now found another loose tooth, so you may be right. To be honest I would rather have them all removed and have dentures put in at least I would not be embarrassed to smile. LOL. No one has suggested HBO to me. I duid not even know what it was until I saw it on this site.

Thanx

Margie

My teethe had started to break off, fillings fall out and teeth come loose before I was diagnosed. After I had the tongue surgery and neck dissection, it was decided to remove my teeth so as top prevent infection and and more problems. This had to be done before rads and chemo and then for rad seed imp[lants in my tongue. This was all done beginning the end of Jan 2008. The 29th of Feb. ,LOL that is an easy date to remember, is the day they did implants. I asked the Dr after about the time line for dentures and from what I can understand, there will be no implants unless I just go get them and when I visit the Drs, take them out. At least they might make me feel better knowing I can smile and it not look like a tunnel in my mouth, waitin g for a train to come out or a Semi.