Lingual Biopsy

Biopsies were completed in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the Ohio State University’s College of Dentistry by a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon. After obtaining surgical consent and acceptable vital signs, participants’ tongues were isolated and retracted by a surgical assistant while local anesthesia was administered by the surgeon. 1.8ml of 2% lidocaine with 1:100,000 epinephrine was locally infiltrated at the surgical site. After 5 minutes had passed and vasoconstriction was visualized, the tongue was again isolated and retracted for the biopsy procedure. A 5mm biopsy punch was used to incise through mucosa and submucosa in the middle third of the dorsal tongue to the right of the midline, and tissue was removed using forceps and scissors. The wound was then closed primarily with 3–0 chromic gut suture. Once removed, the biopsied tissue was placed in a neutral phosphate-buffered 20% formalin solution at 20°C. Samples were stored in the fixing solution at 4°C for one week, prior to anatomical characterization. Care was taken to standardize the duration of time samples spent in the fixative to help minimize inter-individual variation in tissue shrinkage across subjects, however it is likely that some shrinkage did occur in all samples during the storage time.