By Andrea Shalal
BETHESDA, Md. (Reuters) – First lady Jill Biden, accompanied by U.S. President Joe Biden, traveled to a military hospital on Wednesday for surgery to remove a lesion discovered during a routine skin cancer screening, the White House said.
The small lesion was found above the first lady’s right eye recently and she would have an outpatient procedure to remove it, presidential physician Kevin O’Connor said in a statement last week.
“In an abundance of caution, doctors have recommended it be removed,” O’Connor said.
The procedure was to take place at Walter Reed National Military Center in suburban Bethesda, Maryland. President Biden accompanied his wife, 71, to the hospital.
O’Connor said in his statement that the first lady would undergo a common procedure known as Mohs surgery to remove and definitively examine the tissue.
The Mayo Clinic says on its website that Mohs surgery involves cutting away thin layers of skin and each layer is looked at closely for signs of cancer. The process keeps going until there are no signs of cancer.
“The goal of Mohs surgery is to remove all of the skin cancer without hurting the healthy skin around it. Mohs surgery allows the surgeon to be sure that all the cancer is gone. This makes it more likely that the cancer is cured. It reduces the need for other treatments or more surgery,” the Mayo Clinic said.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Alex Richardson)
