Reconstruction of Mohs Facial Defects
Don’t let skin cancer rob you of your confidence.
A diagnosis of skin cancer can be devastating, especially when it’s on your face. As the treatment often involves surgical resection, patients with skin cancer can be left with a disfiguring hole in their face.
The good news is that most can be reconstructed with a small surgery that will close the defect with minimal distortion of the surrounding skin. This should be done soon after the surgical resection to minimize the time that the defect is left open.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Mohs surgery is performed by fellowship-trained dermatologists who sequentially excise cancerous skin in cosmetically sensitive areas such as the face and evaluate the specimen in real-time to determine if there are any cancer cells left. This staged approach allows for the least amount of normal skin to be taken which will enhance the subsequent reconstructive results.
Typically, a Mohs dermatologist will excise the skin cancer and then inform our office that it needs to be reconstructed by a facial plastic surgeon. At this point, we evaluate you in the office soon after the excision to discuss reconstructive options and book your surgery date and time.
This is a very patient and defect-specific question and the answer will differ depending on those factors. During your consultation, depending on the defect or anticipated defect, we can discuss what reconstructive options will give you the best functional and cosmetic outcome.
This also depends! The size and location of the defect as well as individual patient preferences all come into play in deciding the ultimate reconstructive option, which includes the number of stages. We will discuss more during your consultation.
Because Mohs dermatologists are trained to see cancer microscopically, they are able to determine in real-time if all the cancer has been resected. Otherwise, a generous margin of tissue has to be excised around the cancer and we have to wait several days for final pathology to clear the specimen before we can embark on reconstruction. For this reason, especially in cosmetically sensitive real estate like the face, it is preferred to have a Mohs dermatologist excise the cancer followed by reconstruction by a facial plastic surgeon soon thereafter.
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