Mohs surgery is performed by ten to twenty percent of dermatologists, who qualify as Mohs surgeons after completing an additional two-year fellowship beyond their normal dermatology specialty training. Because of its highly specialized nature, the average wait time for appointments with Mohs surgeons is three months. The steps involved in Mohs surgery involve the successive removal of small, thin sections of tissue. Each section is quickly frozen, sliced, placed on a microscope slide, stained, and finally read by the surgeon. If the surgeon determines a section has remaining cancer cells, a new section is taken from the lesion and the process repeated.
Patients are often in surgery for hours and surgeons can only treat about six patients each day.
Photomedicine utilizes light-activated drugs and instrumentation to detect and treat various conditions, including skin cancer. It is a rapidly emerging field that has already been approved to treat a limited number of conditions as diverse as skin lesions, lung cancer and macular degeneration through photodynamic therapy. It has a very promising future in various modalities of detection and treatment.