By age 70, one in five Americans can expect to be diagnosed with skin cancer. Even people who take great care of their skin can suffer from skin cancer. This is especially true if you enjoy outdoor athletics, tanning in tanning beds, the beach or you work outdoors. Once you have been diagnosed with melanoma, it is time to talk with dermatology specialists about the type of melanoma treatment that’s right for you to fully weigh all of the benefits.
Discuss All of Your Melanoma Treatment Options
In order to make the right treatment decisions you need to know your options and possible side effects so you can make an educated decision. There are a few things you should keep in mind when considering melanoma treatment including your overall health and age, the extend of the cancer and the likelihood of being cured. Give yourself plenty of time to weigh all of the options including an mohs procedure. Ask plenty of questions about anything you may not be sure about too.
What Is Mohs Surgery?
When seeking melanoma treatment, you may be informed that mohs surgery is an effective, precise and advanced treatment that is just right for you. Mohs micrographic surgery was developed in the 1930s and offers treatment for an assortment of skin cancer types. Cancer can be precisely identified and removed by skin doctors while protecting the healthy tissue leaving it unharmed and intact.
Mohs procedures are perfect for melanoma treatment since the skin cancer can be surgically removed layer by layer by examining the tissue beneath a microscope until cancer-free tissues is reached. This is called clear margins. This type of surgery has a very high success rate of up to 99% when compared to other types of skin cancer treatments.
The Many Advantages of Mohs Surgery
One of the biggest advantages of mohs procedures is the effective and unique way tissue is removed since it is microscopically examined making it possible to evaluate 100% of surgical margins. Pathologic interpretations of tissue margins are accomplished on-site by mohs surgeons that have been trained to correlate findings on patients. Other advantages include the assurance that cancer removal has been completed during surgery which virtually eliminates the chance of it growing back, the amount of healthy tissue lost is minimized, a cosmetic and functional outcome is maximized, skin cancer stands a great chance of being cured and repairs to the cancer site are done the same day as the cancer removal.
Mohs procedures go beyond other types of skin cancer treatments in that the amount of tissue lost is minimized. No healthy skin is removed and cancer is not blindly treated which could result in tumor re-growth. Mohs is a cost-effective treatment with a high success rate. It typically only takes a single surgery which includes the repairing of any wound. This eliminates the need for additional pathology readings and surgeries to repair wounds needed to treat the cancer if it wasn’t completely removed, which can add up financially compared to a single visit.
The human costs are attractive, as well. A mohs procedure minimizes the amount of tissue removed that’s healthy and it reduces any impact on the surrounding areas. When it comes to aesthetics, mohs surgery optimizes the outcome. The psychological impact of enduring multiple procedures when cancer recurs is significant. The mohs process minimizes risks of recurrence and reduces the cost of a more serious, larger type of surgery that comes with recurrent skin cancer.