Diagnosis

Tests and procedures used to diagnose tonsil cancer include:

• Examining your throat and neck. Your doctor will use a mirror or tiny camera to examine your mouth and throat. The doctor may use his or her hands to feel your neck to check for enlarged lymph nodes.
• Removing a tissue sample for testing. Your doctor will remove an area of suspicious tissue and send it to a lab for testing. In the lab, specially trained doctors (pathologists) will look for signs of cancer. The tissue sample will also be tested for HPV, since the presence of this virus greatly impacts your prognosis and your treatment options.
• Taking imaging tests. To better understand the size of your cancer and to look for signs that cancer may have spread beyond your tonsils, your doctor may recommend imaging tests, such as computerized tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET).

Your doctor uses information from these procedures to assign your cancer a stage. The stages of tonsil cancer range from 0 to IV. The earliest stages indicate a small cancer that may be confined to the tonsil or may have spread to a few nearby lymph nodes. Later stages indicate more-advanced cancer that has grown to involve many lymph nodes or has spread to other areas of the body.