About 7% of oral cancers on the mobile tongue have no known etiology. No HPV, no tobacco, no alcohol. Obviously this is some shared lifestyle issue or a genetic predisposition, but the truth is in that small percentage of people at this time we do not know what is causing them. HPV is almost exclusively found in the posterior mouth, I have yet to meet an anterior tongue HPV patient. We do know that some unusual oncogenic HPV's can be found in studies on the anterior tongue, but they are pretty rare, and because they are different than HPV16 we have no data on long term outcomes. They are HPV 33, 31, and 35. Testing for these particular sub types would have to be done at a university research facility and is out of the realm of ordinary pathology labs. They likely never discussed testing since the treatment would be the same whether it was HPV+ or not at this point in time.

Brian, stage 4 oral cancer survivor. OCF Founder and Director. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.