Christine gave you a good answer. In oral cancer circles, especially with tobacco caused disease, the is often a chance to find it as a "pre cancer," before it has really gone all the way to malignancy. Of course the biopsy will tell you if this is the case or not. If it is cancer, there will be lots of scans to do to evaluate the extent of it, and as a result give him his staging. An early stage (1 or 2) certainly has a survival advantages statistically. A later stage (3-4) is still survivable, but the fight is harder, and the collateral damage from the treatments, referred to as morbidity, can be high. There is a page on the main web site about staging.