Therapeutic approach to mandibular osteonecrosis and the patient's quality of life: A critical review of the past 15 years

Abstract

The objective of this review was to bring an analysis of the therapeutic approach in mandibular osteonecrosis resulting from medications and the patient's quality of life. The study is an Overview. The research was guided by the PICO strategy: P- Patients with mandibular osteonecrosis of drug origin; I- Conservative treatment; C- Surgical treatment; O- Is there an improvement in the patient's quality of life regardless of the treatment instituted, and the guiding question: Is the patient's quality of life influenced by the type of treatment instituted in mandibular osteonecrosis resulting from medication? The MEDLINE|PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, SciELO and Cochrane Library databases and online libraries were used for articles published in the last fifteen years, without language restrictions. In this follow-up, a total of 4073 patients were evaluated after exclusion of duplicates (n = 22) and 6 final articles were selected. Due to the lack of a well-understood pathophysiology in the literature and a series of risk factors associated with the disease, the management of mandibular osteonecrosis is still a major challenge for many professionals.