The clinical diagnostic value of target biopsy using narrow-band imaging endoscopy and accurate laryngeal carcinoma pathologic specimen acquisition

Objective To estimate the clinical significance of target biopsy for clinical diagnosis and determine accurate laryngeal lesion pathologic specimen acquisition via narrow-band imaging (NBI) endoscopy. Methods A total of 138 samples from patients with laryngeal lesions (carcinoma, 118; hyperplasia, 3; mild dysplasia, 2; moderate dysplasia, 5; severe dysplasia, 5; vocal cord polyp, 1; and inflammatory lesion, 4) were collected from the Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery of Tianjin Union Medical Center from 1 January 2013 to 1 February 2015. All patients were divided into the regular biopsy and NBI target biopsy groups; the imaging data were recorded and patient samples were biopsied. Pathologic diagnoses were used to evaluate the accuracies of regular and target biopsy. Results Based on the pathologic diagnosis, NBI target pathology yielded an accurate laryngeal lesion pathologic specimen acquisition rate of 95.6% (65/68), significantly higher than that yielded by regular biopsy (75.7%, 53/70; χ2 = 10.99, P = 0.001). In the NBI target pathology group, the correct accurate pathologic specimen acquisition rates at laryngeal cancer diagnostic stages 0 (Tis), I and II were 100%, 100% and 85.71%, respectively, which were higher than the corresponding rates in the regular biopsy group (0%, χ2 = 10.000, P = 0.002; 25%, χ2 = 5.625, P = 0.018; and 38.46%, χ2 = 6.454, P = 0.011, respectively). Conclusions In cases of laryngeal carcinoma, NBI endoscopy plays an important role in clinical diagnosis and accurate pathologic specimen acquisition and could be a regular clinical method for laryngeal lesion detection.