title: Surgical treatment vs. conservative treatment in intravenous bisphosphonate-related osteonecrosis of the jaws. Systematic review.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To determine the success rates of the surgical and non-surgical treatments in the management of bisphosphonate-related osteonecrosis of the jaws (BRONJ).
  
  
  METHODS
  A systematic review of the literature was made. A PubMed Medline database search was performed in order to include clinical studies published in English,between2004 and 2014 with the following key-words: "BRONJ AND treatment" and "NOT osteoporosis". The following data was gathered: authors, title, year of publication, aim of study, level of evidence, sample size, treatment performed, treatment outcomes and follow-up. Studies including more than 20 patients with at least 6 months of follow-up, and that specify the different treatment approaches and their outcomes were included. Systematic reviews were excluded.All studies were classified according to the SORT criteria (Strength of Recommendation Taxonomy).
  
  
  RESULTS
  The initial electronic search yielded 169 papers, and 13 studies were added after a manual search (total of 182 studies). After analysing the title and abstract and removing duplicates, 31 full-texts were obtained. A total of 12 papers were finally included. Two were classified as level 3 evidence and 9 as level 2. The quality of the selected studies and the risk of bias were also reported.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Surgical treatments like sequestrectomy, surgical debridement and bone osteotomies provide successful treatment outcomes, with success rates ranging from 58 to 100%. Controlled randomized clinical trials with larger samples and longer follow-up are needed to support these findings.Key words:BRONJ, treatment.
authors.affiliation: DDS. Faculty of Dentistry - University of Barcelona.
authors.forename: Aida
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Comas-Calonge
authors.affiliation: DDS, MS, PhD. Master degree program in Oral Surgery and Implantology. Associate professor of Oral Surgery and Professor of the Master degree program of Oral Surgery and Implantology. Faculty of Dentistry - University of Barcelona. Researcher of the IDIBELL institute.
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Figueiredo
authors.affiliation: MD, DDS, MS, PhD. Chairman and Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. Faculty of Dentistry - University of Barcelona. Coordinating investigator of the IDIBELL institute. Head of the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Department, Teknon Medical Center. Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Cosme
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gay-Escoda