Hi, my name is Joy and I've been reading through these forums for quite some time now. I've been diagnosed with SCC, right lateral tongue, well differentiated, superficially invasive. Dysplasia is still present, surrounding the area of the biopsy. Excisional biopsy was done by an oral surgeon. Just saw my first ENT today and he tells me that I have 4 choices:

1)radiation
2)excise the affected part of my tongue, about 1/4 of it
3)excise the invasive component (the rest of the tumor and surrounding leukoplakia) with a laser
4)excise only the rest of the tumor, and keep an eye on the leukoplakia

I asked him about doing combinations of the above, such as 1 and 3, and he said that he felt that would be overkill, and I should be able to choose either radiation or surgery, and either one would take care of it. Radiation has a better chance of killing microscopic cancer cells, whereas with surgery you never really know if you got it all or if there are still some cells there waiting to spread. Of course, I guess you never really know until it has spread.

I have an appt with another ENT for a second opinion, but wondered if any of you have any comments to help guide me. My gut feeling is to have the radiation to be sure that I did everything I could, but after reading all your stories on this forum I hate like hell to have radiation if I don't really need it.

Any comments or opinions would be much appreciated. smile

Thanks,
Joy

8/2006: SCC, right lateral tongue, well differentiated, superficially invasive. 10/2009: recurrence, rt lateral tongue, surgery, rt mod neck dissection. 2/2010: metastasized node under left mandible. 3/2010: Induction chemo 3 rounds, Cisplatin, Tax, 5-FU. Surg and rad to follow.