I’m a 47-year-old woman with biopsy-confirmed skin cancer on my face. Will surgical removal necessarily leave me disfigured?
“No. For your treatment, consider Mohs surgery, a specialized technique for removing commonly occurring skin cancers while sparing the greatest amount of normal, healthy tissue,” says
Mohsin Mir, M.D., a board-certified dermatologist and Mohs surgeon at Kelsey-Seybold Clinic. “While surgical procedures have some degree of visible scarring, the Mohs technique results in a smaller, less noticeable scar.”
The Mohs difference: minimizing scarring while maximizing cure rate“Mohs surgery differs from other techniques in that cancerous cells are removed in layers and examined during surgery rather than afterward,” Dr. Mir explains. “As the surgery gradually proceeds, each layer is removed and examined microscopically until the skin cancer is completely excised.”
Dr. Mir says these during-surgery microscopic examinations allow him to target and remove the offending cells while sparing normal tissue and minimizing scarring for better cosmetic results.
“Mohs surgery also helps provide better therapeutic results with a lower risk for cancer recurrence and is completed on an outpatient basis with local anesthesia. For most cases, actual time for surgically removing a layer of tissue usually takes five to 10 minutes. Processing results may take another 30 minutes to an hour,” concludes Dr. Mir.
For more information, call Kelsey-Seybold’s Mohs Surgery Suite: 713-442-MOHS (6647).
