my husband had part of his tongue removed with a flap placed in 2007 due to squamous cell cancer of the tongue. He has followed up with his ENT MD every six months.....but on his last visit they decided to biopsy a small area close to the original site...due to small \"white\" growths. The biopsy revealed keratosis with moderate dysplagia. Is this cause for concern?
Thanks for your question on Chat Doctor. Tongue cancer is very notorious for local recurrence. The biopsy report you have mentioned is suggestive of malignant recurrence. The cells in histopathology terms as dysplasia when they are malignant. When morphology of cells is not normal, they have high nuclei cytoplasmic ratio with irregular borders and granules in cytoplasm than they are termed as dysplasia cells. So keratitis is not cancer, but keratitis with dysplasia is cancer.