Jill Biden to Undergo Surgery After Discovery Is Made During Cancer Screening
First lady Jill Biden will have outpatient surgery next week to remove a lesion over her right eye, her office announced Wednesday.
“During a routine skin cancer screening, a small lesion was found above the First Lady’s right eye. In an abundance of caution, doctors have recommended that it be removed,” White House physician Kevin O’Connor said in a news release shared by the first lady’s office on Twitter.
Biden will face “a common outpatient procedure known as Mohs surgery to remove and definitively examine the tissue,” O’Connor wrote.
During a routine skin cancer screening, a small lesion was found above the First Lady’s right eye. Memo here from Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Physician to the President, with more information on the First Lady’s upcoming outpatient procedure to have it removed and examined. pic.twitter.com/DIQrnjtZFc
— Vanessa Valdivia (@vvaldivia46) January 4, 2023
The surgery is scheduled for Wednesday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
“As promised, I will keep your office appraised of any changes in her condition or treatment plan,” O’Connor said.
Biden’s press secretary, Vanessa Valdivia, said more details about the procedure will be released after it is over, according to NBC News.
According to the Mayo Clinic, Mohs surgery “involves cutting away thin layers of skin. Each thin 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,” it said.
Johns Hopkins Medicine says the surgery is often performed on people with a “suppressed immune system.”
Mohs Surgery for Effective Removal of Skin Cancer https://t.co/osL4IL00bs
— HealthResource4U (@HealthResorce4U) January 3, 2023
At 71, Jill Biden is America’s oldest sitting first lady, according to CNN.
President Joe Biden and his family returned this week from a vacation in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The upcoming procedure will be the first lady’s third trip to the hospital since her husband took office.
In July 2021, she went to Walter Reed to have an object removed from her foot. The first lady had stepped on a sharp object while walking on a beach in Hawaii, according to The Washington Post.
In April 2021, Jill Biden underwent another outpatient procedure.
In August, she was diagnosed with COVID-19, and shortly after diagnosed with so-called rebound COVID, according to NPR.
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