I had assumed that he must have had a brush biopsy for the doctor to say it was cancer and needed further biopsy. My experience has been that the doctors might say that something concerns them but that they can't be sure without the biopsy. I don't know enough about the diagnostic procedures to know if they can be pretty sure just by looking.

ilene
SCC stage 1 1987, 1/4 of tongue removed, neck dissection, SCC stage 3 2000, another 1/4+ removed second neck dissection, radiation.