In contrast, the use of a soft tissue flap such as the RFFF or antero-lateral thigh flap can often be safely employed in elderly patients with peripheral vascular disease without unduly lengthening the operation too significantly with two-team operating. In addition, the predictability of these flaps with their excellent pedicle lengths is ideal for closure of the resulting oro-nasal surgical defect. The use of a slightly oversized graft is recommended to ensure that any tension on the wound peripheries is kept to a minimum during the healing phase. In addition, for those patients undergoing post-operative radiotherapy, a degree of shrinkage and tightening of the flap tissues is to be expected.

Immediate/early loading of zygomatic [8] and dental implants [9] have been well demonstrated already within the literature with very high implant survival rates. In the oncology setting, Boyes-Varley et al. [4] lost no zygomatic/oncology implants in their series of 20 patients restored with implant-retained obturators, 6 of whom received radiotherapy post-operatively. The case reported has been followed up for 18 months so far without evidence of zygomatic implant failure despite the use of radiotherapy. A recent review of conventional zygomatic implant surgery demonstrated that the incidence of failure after the 6-month stage was extremely low [8] although for zygomatic oncology implants, this data is not yet fully reported in the literature with the only data available on zygomatic oncology implants being limited to the work of Boyes-Valey [4], Pellegrino [10] and the authors themselves [6]. The removal of teeth at primary cancer surgery to facilitate placement of implants on the non-defect side requires careful consideration; where teeth are of poor prognosis with poor bone support, it is easier to extract, perform localised osteoplasty prior to the insertion of a conventional zygomatic implant with its inherent excellent stability and ability to be loaded early in the post-operative period. Where teeth have excellent bone support but additional implants are required to facilitate the construction of a fixed prosthesis, then careful extraction of selected teeth with the immediate installation of a root form implant can be utilised with good success as long as high primary stability is achieved at these sites.