My husband had his follow up with his ENT/surgeon and forunately he got a good report. But my friend's husband did not get such good news after a biopsy of a lesion on his tongue. He was told he has atypical cells including high nuclear to cytoplasm ratio and abnornally high levels of keratinazation. He is now scheduled for a core biopsy. Any info I can pass on to my friend will be greatly appreciated. Also how will the core biopsy affect his eating and will he have pain. Thanks in advance; LM

There will be some discomfort for a couple of days, but this should not affect his eating at all. The procedure is often referred to as a punch biopsy, since they use a little round tissue punch, essentially a little razor blade cookie cutter, to take out a small sample of tissue instead of using a scalpel to do the removal. The core of tissue inside this little punched out section allows the pathologist to see the architecture of the cells, in other words how they are stacked on top of each other. This is an important point in determining how far along things have gotten, and how deeply anything has invaded into the tissue. Punches such as these are also used for moving plugs of hair during transplantation. They only cut a little circle of about 6mm in diameter.