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Osteonecrosis of the jaw has been reported increasingly in patients who receive IV bisphosphonates (i.e., zoledronic acid and pamidronate) to treat and prevent cancer-related bone lesions. To estimate the incidence of this complication, researchers linked data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program (a cancer registry covering one quarter of the U.S. population) with Medicare claims.
About 14,000 cancer patients who received IV bisphosphonates were matched (by variables including age, cancer type, and geographic location) with about 29,000 cancer patients who did not receive bisphosphonates. Because a specific diagnosis code for jaw osteonecrosis did not exist, the diagnosis of “inflammatory conditions of the jaw”…