Some experience with in vivo staining of early laryngeal cancer in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Laryngeal cancer, clinically as well as pathologically, usually does not pose a difficult problem in diagnosis. The problem lies in the clinical diagnosis of early laryngeal cancer. We began to study and develop the in vivo staining technique for laryngeal lesions in our clinic, using toluidine blue, an acidophilic metachromatic dye. This preliminary study comprised eight cases of laryngeal lesions, five of which were carcinoma. Among these latter cases, besides carcinoma, we were able to detect dysplasia in two cases, carcinoma in situ in one case, and a false-positive area in one case. Noncarcinoma cases consisted of dysplasia, dysplasia in postradiation for carcinoma, and carcinoma in situ. In two cases of carcinoma, the tumor margin was accurately defined by positive staining area. This experience suggests that in vivo staining may be a useful method for early detection of laryngeal cancer used as an adjunct to microlaryngoscopy.