Excision Surgery in Waterloo

Tell your dermatologist what prescription and over-the-counter medications you might be taking. Continue taking all medications unless your doctor instructs you to discontinue them. For the week leading up to the surgery, avoid applying any topical creams, ointments, or lotions to the area before surgery. Avoid alcohol for a few days before and after the surgery.

In most cases, excision is an outpatient procedure that uses local anesthetics. Although the local anesthetics don’t impede your judgment and prevent you from driving, we recommend asking someone to bring you to the surgery and drive you home afterward.

Make sure to follow all of your dermatologist’s post-operative instructions. Doing so will maximize healing and minimize scarring. Keep the wound dry and clean. Avoid alcohol for a few days after the surgery, and try to minimize exercise like lifting and bending for one week.

Anesthetics will wear off within a few hours of the surgery, and you may experience some pain or tenderness around the excision site. Over-the-counter medications like Tylenol are usually sufficient to manage post-operative discomfort.

In most cases, an excision surgery will only take about an hour. Your excision surgery may be longer or shorter depending on the size of the lesion to be removed.

Both Mohs surgery and excision surgery in Waterloo seek to remove skin cancer by cutting the cancerous tissue away. However, Mohs surgery is designed to preserve as much healthy tissue as possible and is most often used to remove skin cancer on the face, hands, genitals, or other sensitive, high-functioning parts of the body. Excision surgery removes a wider margin of tissue for similar results.

Healing time will depend on the extent of the excision. Larger and deeper excisions will take longer to heal. Your dermatologist can give you a timeline of what to expect.

Most excisions result in scarring, but we will do our best to minimize scarring as much as possible. Following all of your surgeon’s post-operative directions will also help the wound heal quickly and minimize scarring.