Mandibular osteonecrosis due to bisphosphonate use

Due to their efficient osteoclastic inhibitor effect in bone metabolism and antiangiogenic activity, bisphosphonates are widely used in many cancer diseases particularly in prostate cancers with bone metastasis, lung cancer, breast cancer and multiple myeloma, as well as in systemic diseases such as osteoporosis, osteopenia, Paget disease and osteogenesis imperfect for the last 13 years. Prostate cancer is a common cancer in males and it is the leading cause of bone metastasis. Mandibular metastasis is rarely encountered during the course of prostate cancer. Mandibular osteonecrosis as well has begun to be observed along with the availability of more efficient and stronger formulations developed following the use of bisphosphonates. Zolendronic acid, which has been used also by our patient, has widely come into practice as a 3(rd) generation bisphosphonate. Because of prostate cancer and widespread bone metastases, our patient has been receiving zolendronic acid with maximum androgen blockage for 4 years. Tomography of the patient, who has undergone intensive treatment because of submandibular abscess, demonstrated extensive osteonecrosis in the fovea sublingual region of the mandible corpus. In large series, although, mandibular osteonecrosis was widely seen due to bisphosphonate use for the metastases of lung and breast cancers, this rate was between 9.6% and 11% for prostate cancer within the series. Although our patient had no mandibular metastasis before, mandibular necrosis was observed due to long-term bisphosphonate use. We are going to present our patient who had this rare complication with his clinical picture.