Real-time ultrasonography in the otolaryngology office setting

Over the past two decades, diagnostic ultrasonography has evolved into an extensively used noninvasive imaging modality. It plays a vital role in the disciplines of vascular surgery, cardiology, neonatology, pediatrics, ophthalmology, gynecology, and urology, to name a few, but it is in the field of obstetrics that this technology has been maximally used as an office procedure to evaluate the status of the fetus. In the evaluation of head and neck disorders, ultrasonography has been the subject of sporadic reports for the past 15 years.le3 However, except for the evaluation of thyroid masses,4 it has never been widely accepted in the United States as a diagnostic modality, and has taken a b…

A Targeted Problem and Its Solution

Quantitative DNA measurements in malignant and benign lesions of the upper aerodigestive tract.

Thirty-six patients underwent biopsy of clinically suspicious lesions of the mucosa of the upper aerodigestive tract. The biopsy material was evaluated histologically and cytologic smears out of the same lesion underwent quantitative DNA analysis using a numerical index derived from the single cell DNA content. In 30 patients, histologically diagnosed squamous cell cancer was confirmed by DNA analysis with the malignancy grade correlating with the morphologic differentiation of the tumor. Six lesions were histologically benign: i.e. dysplasia (n = 3), hyperplasia (n = 2) and chronic inflammation (n = 1). DNA analysis confirmed the benign nature in 4 cases, but in 2 cases of dysplasia, a dia…

Prognostic indicators for squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity: a clinicopathologic correlation.

Fifty-three patients with T1 squamous cell cancer of the floor of mouth and ventral surface of the tongue with a known clinical outcome were retrospectively analyzed and arbitrarily divided into "aggressive" and "nonaggressive" groups based on their clinical behavior. Various host and tumor factors were then evaluated in an attempt to determine whether the tumor behavior could have been predicted. The paraffin-embedded tumor specimens were evaluated for tumor differentiation, tumor thickness and tumor invasion, microvessel density, and p53 expression. In addition, a composite morphologic grading score was obtained by combining cell differentiation, nuclear polymorphism, mitosis activity, de…