In the contemporary management of ORN, there are well defined
and effective treatment strategies for early and advanced disease.
Early disease (Stage I) is managed conservatively (local
wound care, HBO, and antibiotics). Advanced disease (Stage III) is
managed surgically with a wide extirpation and immediate microvascular
reconstruction. It is the intermediate stage disease (Stage
II) for which it remains difficult to recommend a definitive treatment
course. Unquestionably, there are intermediate stage patients
who will respond to trans-oral debridement, HBO, and
antibiotics. There is also a subset of intermediate stage patients
who do not respond to this treatment plan and ultimately require
a segmental resection and reconstruction. Since we currently do
not have any pre-operative radiological or clinical criteria which
can differentiate these patients, our current philosophy is to bring
these patients to the operating room with the plan for a trans-oral
debridement and primary closure. If mucosal closure is not feasible
a vascularized soft tissue flap is utilized. Furthermore, we prepare
these patients for the possibility that it may not be possible to
effectively debride back to healthy bleeding bone without the creation
of a segmental defect and therefore require conversion of the
procedure to a radical resection and free flap reconstruction. It is
the intra-operative finding of bleeding bone edges, without compromise to the structural integrity of the mandible, that we use to
try to differentiate between the patients that will respond to a
trans-oral debridement and the patients that will not. We believe
that the patients who do not have adequate bleeding from the
cut bone edges at the time of debridement are at high risk for failure.
The assessment of bone viability via the intra-operative finding
of bleeding bone edges is admittedly a very crude technique
for determining adequacy of debridement but currently there is
no other scientific measure which can be utilized. It is hoped that
in the future there will be a more objective means to assess bone
viability.