Table 4.

Predictive accuracy of the decision to biopsy a leukoplakia

Characteristic	Overall oral cancers (n = 161)*, †	Oral cancers <12 mo after leukoplakia diagnosis (n = 73)*	Oral cancers ≥12 mo after leukoplakia diagnosis (n = 88)*
Sensitivity, %	59.6	65.8	54.5
Specificity, %	62.1	62.9	62.6
PPV, %	5.1	2.5	2.5
NPV, %	97.8	99.2	98.7
cNPV (=1-NPV), %	2.2	0.8	1.3

^*Versus oral cancer incidence as the gold-standard. Biopsy within +/- 30 days of leukoplakia diagnosis. Analyses were conducted in the entire leukoplakia cohort (n = 4886). cNPV = complement of the negative predictive value; NPV = negative predictive value; PPV = positive predictive value.

^†Of 161 oral cancers, 96 preceding leukoplakias were biopsied and 65 preceding leukoplakias were not biopsied. See Supplementary Figure 1 (available online) for additional details.