It can be confusing for clinicians to work their way through the tangle of pathologic terms used in surgical pathology reports to describe squamous abnormalities in laryngeal biopsies. After a brief review of the normal microscopic anatomy of the larynx and time-honored clinical designations for surface-based abnormalities, this report sorts pathologic changes into 2 groups: those changes that do not carry a premalignant potential (including squamous metaplasia, squamous hyperplasia, pseudoepitheliomatous hyperplasia, keratosis, and parakeratosis) and those that do (including dyskeratosis, laryngeal intraepithelial neoplasia [LIN], atypia, dysplasia, and carcinoma in situ). Generally, lesions in the first group do not require additional therapy or close follow-up; lesions in the second group, however, demand either some form of local therapy or close follow-up to monitor for the development of a more aggressive pathology.
Copyright © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.