Boulder Mohs Surgery doctors

A: untreated basal cell carcinoma In general, basal cell carcinomas are not life threatening skin cancers . They are however known as the rodent ulcer. This term comes from the fact that they are locally destructive to the tissue. They certainly can invade and eat in to bone. Aside from being disfiguring, this cancer can eventually spread and when it does it is more deadly than melanoma.

A: How long to take 5 Mohs layers

This is an odd question. It is difficult to reliably predict how many layers a Mohs procedure will take but if your cancer requires 5 layers then it is usually quite large or deep or both. In general, to take a Mohs layer requires the patient be brought to the operating suite, anesthetized, prepped and then an incision is made to remove tissue.  Then the tissue gets processed in the lab which can take a variable amount of time depending on the size of the tissue, how much fat, etc.  Then the tissue gets mounted on slides and stained through another tedious process.  Finally, the surgeon reads the slides and maps any residual tumor cells and the process is repeated as necessary to achieve clear margins.  Following this a fellowship trained mohs surgeon with experinece in reconstructive surgery will then repair the area which again will dpened on how extensive the surgical site is and how complex the repair procedure must be to achieve an optimal cosmetic outcome.

A: Waiting on your Mohs surgery

For some types of cancers waiting several weeks to even a few months may not be disastrous.  Other types of skin cancers should be removed rapidly , especially rapidly growing cancers such as rapidly growing squamous cell carcinomas and melanomas. Remember you have been diagnosed with cancer. The nice thing is that since it is on your face you can watch it for the most part , whereas if you were diagnosed with an internal cancer, my guess would be that  your intuition would be to see how fast you could get to the operating room to have it removed.  That being said a basal cell carcinoma is usually rather slow growing and is mostly locally destructive until it reaches a large size where if it spreads to the lymph nodes it can be more deadly than melanoma. If your cancer is indeed small, then waiting 1-2 months may allow it to grow another 1-2 millimeters which should not change the repair option for your Mohs surgeon and only make the cancer removal area slightly larger. In these cases of small slow growing BCCs , I will often support the patients decision to wait until after their big event to have their surgery performed.