Most surgery has an interesting history and it’s actually named after the surgeon who invented it so Mohs is a person’s name. it’s not an abbreviation for anything [inaudible 00:00:14] those lines. But, what happens on a typical day of surgery? Patients would come in. They’ve eaten beforehand and they had their normal breakfast and all the medications. They come in, we’d talk about the procedure and what we envision will happen. And in the same way that the biopsy had been performed previously, the area is numbed up with a local anesthetic. We take a small sample or layer, we call it, of tissue and we actually bring that into a lab where the patient is waiting. The patients in our office are usually sitting in a comfortable waiting room. They’re having coffee or donuts or healthier snacks, hopefully, but they’re just relaxing for about 30 to 45 minutes or preparing microscope slides.

That’s really where the magic of nose surgery occurs. It’s certainly the surgery to remove it that then also in the laboratory because in the laboratory, we’re able to look at the entire perimeter of the tissue, entire base of the tissue and actually examine 100% of the tissue edge, which is a little bit unique compared to how a traditional surgery is done. There are some technical things there, but it really allows us to be very precise so when we do that, we have to take a small margin rather than taking a large margin around the tumor. So then, we’ve evaluated the tumor under the microscope, which is part of a nose surgeons training. What makes some nose microscopic surgeon different than just typical surgeon who would send it off to a pathologist. That all happens while the pt is waiting and having coffee. If there’s anything more or actually, [inaudible 00:01:40] identify exactly in what quadrant or section there’s more cancer, so it might be cancer up the right or it might be cancer of the left at 6:00 or right underneath and we’ve created them now.

That helps to [inaudible 00:01:52] exactly where those skin cancer cells are and we’re able to bring the patient and say, “We have cancer at 3:00. We just need to take a little bit more. We do that in the same technique and then we bring it off to lab again and if they’re clear, then we can start talking bat how to repair their wound.

The Healing Process After Mohs Surgery

Dr. Matthew Mahlberg discusses the healing process after Mohs Surgery.

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