[quote=Gary]...But, for what it's worth, IMO, it sounds like a typical early stage tongue cancer pathology report. The 2 most important terms in a path report are: Differentiation -which means has the cancer remained in one tissue type ("well differentiated") or is in the bone, muscle, lymph and other soft tissue ("poorly differentiated"), in other words it's degree of invasiness? Secondly "Focally infiltrating" is related to differention. Ideally you only want one tissue type involved.... [/quote]

Somewhat different; pertaining to cancer cell differentiation, I was told a "well differentiated cancer cell" is very similar to a normal cell, but a "poorly differentiated cancer cell" has devolved into a somewhat primitive cellular structure that reproduces frequently and haphazardly in an out of control manner.

I was also told that radiation is considerably more effective on the poorly differentiated cancer cells because they have lost the ability to effective repair the DNA damage it does.