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Proliferative verrucous leukoplakia: Recognition and differentiation from conventional leukoplakia and mimics
Author(s) -
Gillenwater Ann M.,
Vigneswaran Nadarajah,
Fatani Hanadi,
Saintigny Pierre,
ElNaggar Adel K.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
head and neck
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.012
H-Index - 127
eISSN - 1097-0347
pISSN - 1043-3074
DOI - 10.1002/hed.23505
Subject(s) - leukoplakia , verrucous carcinoma , dysplasia , medicine , pathology , basal cell , head and neck , head and neck squamous cell carcinoma , differential diagnosis , dermatology , cancer , head and neck cancer , surgery
The majority of conventional leukoplakia remains constant and only a subset progress to high‐grade dysplasia or invasive carcinoma. A less recognized form known as proliferative verrucous leukoplakia (PVL) represents a unique progressive and elusive variant. Identifying patients with this form can only be achieved through the keen clinical observation of the temporal gross and histologic progression in individual patients with squamous cell carcinoma. The difficulty in the early diagnosis of PVL stems from the overlapping clinical and pathologic features with conventional multifocal leukoplakia with dysplasia. We present the current view on the clinicopathologic and biological characteristics of PVL and discuss their diagnosis, differential diagnosis, and management. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Head Neck 36: 1662–1668, 2014