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Objective Inter-observer agreement in the context of oral epithelial dysplasia (OED) grading has been notoriously unreliable and can impose barriers for developing new molecular markers and diagnostic technologies. This paper aimed to report the details of a 3-stage histopathology review and adjudication process with the goal of achieving a consensus histopathologic diagnosis of each biopsy. Study Design Two adjacent serial histological sections of oral lesions from 846 patients were independently scored by two different pathologists from a pool of four. In instances where the original two pathologists disagreed, a third, independent adjudicating pathologist conducted a review of both sections. If a majority agreement was not achieved, the third stage involved a face-to-face consensus review. Results Individual pathologist pair kappa values ranged from 0.251 – 0.706 (fair – good) before the 3-stage review process During the initial review phase, the two pathologists agreed on a diagnosis for 69.9% of the cases. After the adjudication review by a third pathologist, an additional 22.8% of cases were given a consensus diagnosis (agreement of 2 out of 3 pathologists). Following the face-to-face review, the remaining 7.3% of cases had a consensus diagnosis. Conclusion The use of the defined protocol resulted in a substantial increase (30%) in diagnostic agreement and has the potential to improve the level of agreement for establishing gold standards for studies based on histopathologic diagnosis.

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Laryngeal keratosis (LK) is a precancerous mucosal change with great similarity to oral leukoplakia. Its malignant transformation rate varies from 1% to 40%, with the highest rates being found in patients microscopically diagnosed as "keratosis with atypia" (KWA). Recent evidence indicates that even cases with only mild or moderate epithelial dysplasias are at increased risk for malignant transformation, with the highest rates occurring in patients with more severe dysplasia or carcinoma in situ. Approximately 81% of LK patients are men and the average age at diagnosis is 50 years, a decade younger than that for laryngeal carcinoma patients. A high proportion of LK patients are tobacco smokers (84%) and alcohol abusers (at least 35%). LK is almost always found on the true vocal cords and is usually bilateral (67%). Clinical signs of high risk include, in decreasing order of importance: erythroplakia, surface granularity, increased keratin thickness, increased size, recurrence after conservative removal, and long duration. The annual incidence of LK in the United States is 10.2 and 2.1 lesions per 100,000 males and females, respectively.

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