Preparing for Mohs surgery

1. Review the Mohs surgical procedure video (below)
2. Eat a healthy breakfast
3. Take your daily medications as usual on the morning of your surgery, and bring a list of all medications you are taking.
4. Bring your insurance card(s) and a photo I.D.
5. Please arrive 15 minutes prior to your scheduled surgery time.
6. It is helpful to have someone accompany you to provide companionship and to drive you home; however, many patients are fine attending surgery independently.
7. Bring a book or phone (on average, it takes an hour to prepare and study tissue slides).
8. Surgery rooms might be chilly so dress in layers.
9. The surgical site cannot get wet for 24-48 hours after surgery. Please take this into consideration when planning your hygiene schedule.

What happens on the day of surgery?

You will…

1. Sign consent forms
2. Get positioned in the surgical chair
3. Have your surgical site cleaned
4. Have pre-operative photos taken of the surgical site
5. Be numbed with local anesthetic around your skin cancer and then surgery begins!

Duration of surgery

The removal of each layer of tissue takes approximately 1-2 hours. Only 5-10 minutes of that time is spent in the actual surgical procedure, the remaining time is required for slide preparation and interpretation. Removal of two or three layers of tissue (called “stages”) is usually required to complete the surgery. Therefore, if begun early in the morning, Mohs Surgery is generally completed in one day, or part of a day. A tumor is rarely extensive enough to need additional surgery.