He no longer has it. It s been removed. The area is cleaned. The lesion was discovered during the president s physical last Friday at Bethesda Naval Hospital by Dr. David Corbett, retired chairman of the hospital s dermatology department. He suspected that the small flat spot on the president s back might be cancerous.
Doctors typically use an electric needle that destroys the residual tumor and controls bleeding.
Siewert said that because of his doctor s suspicions last week, Clinton was not surprised Tuesday when Dr. E. Connie Mariano, his chief physician, informed him that the lesion was cancerous. Mariano told the president to wear sun screen and hats and avoid overexposure to the sun, Siewert said. Clinton is not the first president to be treated for basal cell skin cancer. Lyndon B. Johnson had a secret operation in 1967 to remove a basal cell carcinoma from his left ankle. Ronald Reagan had a basal cell skin cancer removed from his nose, and his vice president, George Bush, had a similar growth excised from his face.