4 Benefits of Mohs Surgery

There’s no doubt that receiving a skin cancer diagnosis is scary, and you likely have a lot of questions about your treatment options and whether or not your skin cancer can be cured. 

Fortunately, with the advancements in today’s treatment options, there’s a good chance your skin cancer could be completely taken care of! Especially if it has been detected early enough. 

One of those treatment options is Mohs surgery, which is often recommended as a highly effective treatment for melanoma skin cancer, squamous cell carcinoma, and basal cell carcinoma. 

If you’ve been recommended Mohs surgery for your skin cancer by a board-certified dermatologist, you likely have many questions about this treatment, such as what it is, what are the benefits of Mohs surgery, and how it compares to other skin cancer treatment options.

To help you get a better idea of Mohs surgery and why we think its a game-changing skin cancer treatment, keep reading our guide below. 

First things first — what is Mohs surgery? And how is it performed? 

Mohs surgery is a skin cancer treatment that utilizes a precise technique to remove cancerous tissue while leaving the surrounding healthy skin untouched and preserved. 

This procedure involves strategically targeting and removing the skin cancer by using a special mapping technique and going into each layer of skin individually, extracting the cancerous tissue, and then bandaging up the area. 

During this process, we also take a small sample of the surrounding skin to be sent off to our in-house lab for further testing. Following the procedure, you’ll be shown to a surgical waiting room while the skin tissue is sent off to the lab for testing and evaluation. 

If our dermatologists don’t see any cancer cells, then your procedure is done! If there are still cancer cells remaining, then we go into the area once more and remove another layer of skin. We continue doing this until there are no cancer cells remaining in your tissue sample. 

There are several benefits to choosing Mohs surgery over other types of skin cancer treatments! This includes: 

1. Highest Cure Rate

Compared to other forms of treatment, such as topical creams or light therapy, Mohs surgery boasts a 95% cure rate for two common skin cancers — basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. 

2. Minimal Scarring

Mohs surgery maximizes healthy skin preservation and removes only the cancer itself. This means using the smallest incision possible, which helps to minimize potential scarring. 

3. Low-Cost Benefits

Since Mohs surgery is performed in an office, rather than a hospital, there’s absolutely no hospital stay needed or the hefty expenses that come along with it. This means you benefit from lower costs and a happier wallet. 

4. Local Anesthesia Only

Did you know there are more risks associated with general anesthesia compared to local anesthesia? At Cumberland Skin, our board-certified dermatologists use only local anesthesia for Mohs surgery to ensure the procedure is safer and more comfortable for patients.