Exactly What Happens During Mohs Surgery

By Julie Bain

Mohs is a special technique for treating certain basal cell and squamous cell skin cancers. Its goal is to remove the tumor with the smallest possible scar and the highest cure rate. Our health director Julie Bain has had four Mohs surgeries in her skin-cancer-riddled life (lucky her). She recently had two on her scalp at the same time, which she chronicles for us in this slide show.

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Finding Cancer

After I told Manhattan dermatologist and Mohs surgeon David Kriegel, MD, my concerns about a spot on my scalp that didn't seem to heal, he cut out a small piece of it and sent it to the pathology lab. It turned out to be a squamous cell carcinoma. About 700,000 of these are diagnosed each year in the United States, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation, and about 2,500 people die from them. Yikes! Dr. Kriegel's office staff waited until after my birthday to call and tell me the news -- nice of them.

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