Dental Implant Treatment In Patients With Oral Cancer: Literature Review

The aim of this review is to evaluate the timing of dental implants placement and long-term survival rates in patients who have had prosthetic rehabilitation with dental implants after ablative surgery and radiotherapy (RT), and have had head and neck cancer (HNC). For this purpose; implant survival (IS) rates placed as primary/secondary or placed in bones with/without RT were evaluated. The literature published between 2000 - 2020 has been reviewed for the evaluation of dental implant treatment in patients with HNC. The search terms used in PubMed scans were "head and neck cancer", "oral cancer", "dental implant" and "radiotherapy". 134 related articles have been defined in PubMed database searches and 16 were included in the final analysis. Dental implant applications have gained importance in the prosthetic treatment of patients with oral cancer. In cases where conventional prosthetic treatments are insufficient, dental implants provide retention and stability to dentures. However, before starting treatment, whether the patient is receiving chemotherapy, RT and the use of bisphosphonate should be taken into consideration and the timing of the surgical procedures should be adjusted correctly. In addition, these patients should be followed up regularly for a long time.