WHAT IS MOHS SURGERY?
In the early 1940’s, Dr Frederick Mohs, Professor of Surgery at the University of Wisconsin, developed this advanced surgical treatment for skin cancer. Mohs surgery is highly specialised treatment for the total removal of skin cancers. Mohs surgery is a subspeciality of Dermatology and your dermatologist has done further training registered with the Australian College of Dermatologists.
Mohs surgery is most commonly used to treat basal cell carcinomas and intraepithelial carcinomas or squamous cell carcinomas. It may also be used to treat a variety of rare tumours.
When a BCC or SCC is excised with other surgery, it is removed with a margin of 3-4mm around the tumour. This removes the tumour completely in 95% of cases; however, in 5% of cases, pathology analysis may confirm the tumour to be present at the edge of the specimen. This means that the cancer has not been fully removed, and necessitates further surgery, with re-excision of the scar at a later date.