The clinical context and utility of tongue biopsies.

Lesions of patients' tongue biopsies are described to determine whether certain patients had predilections to develop various lesions based on gender or age, and to determine whether there were significant correlations between the diagnoses, which could be clinically useful, and the various patients. Surgical pathology specimens of the tongue were reviewed. Patients' gender, age and diagnoses were recorded. Most of the 399 patients surveyed were elderly. Patients with epidermal inclusion cysts or granular cell tumors were significantly younger than others. Men were younger than women with squamous cell dysplasia and carcinoma. Benign diagnoses were nearly equally distributed between men and women. Premalignant and malignant conditions were significantly more common among men than women. Follow-up revealed a moderate degree of risk that a premalignant lesion may later develop frank malignancy.