Mohs surgery

You know, the photo they show the dorsal hand, right? I mean, these are squames where the pathologist is like, minimally invasive or actinic, but can't rule out.

Patients don't want to go to Mohs.

They're surgery weary at that point.

And so they're like, doc, just cut this thing out.

And y- you know, they're starting...

At this point in residency, there were places that were starting to do Mohs on melanoma.

Yeah.

But for an invasive melanoma that'd been there for three years-

Diabetics with low blood flow.

Parts of your body where you have low blood flow or like an elbow that always opens, right? Because it's like you can't get the skin or like skin on a forehead for like Mohs.

One of our patients, 26-year-old girl, the doctor couldn't get the margins and just kept cutting and cutting and then tried to stitch her up and the whole thing opened.

And she had... a massive hole.

And he never got a bruise.

Wow.

And that's where seeing patients that have Mohs that use the product working with their dermatologist, they don't bruise and they don't swell because we take you through a different like an inflammatory process, which is so freaking cool.

I was going to say, I'm not a doctor, but what I'm thinking right now as you're saying this is that what bruising is, what inflammation is, I think inflammation gets a bad rap, obviously, because we don't want too much of it.

Today's guest is working to change that.

Dr. Whitney Hovenick is a double- board-certified dermatologist, Mohs surgeon, and co-founder of an incredible sunscreen brand called Spooge.

And as she said, if you're French, Spooge, you could say that, but really, Spooge, a mineral sunscreen brand built to make sun protection feel less like a lecture and more like a daily beauty habit people actually want to wear.

So Dr. Whitney treats skin cancer patients every day, including people in their 20s and 30s.

And that's, we also just really wanted to like grab your attention with the name, but like hold your attention with our mission and our products.

So, so interesting.

And you are a double board certified dermatologist and Mohs surgeon.

So what are you seeing in your practice that I guess makes you feel like a new sunscreen was really needed out there? Obviously one that people are actually going to wear, but maybe there's, you know, some ingredients that are in some of these existing products or the trends, I guess, too, that are out there that you're seeing more and more.

Hi, I'm Dr. Kavita Marawalla, double board certified Mohs surgeon and dermatologist.

It's my pleasure to present to you today re-emphasizing the role of moisturization in atopic dermatitis.

If you're like me and you see patients all day long, you sometimes don't realize just how prevalent atopic dermatitis is in the general population.

Dr.

Van Beek is a nationally recognized Mohs surgeon, health policy leader, and advocate who currently serves on the American Medical Association Board of Trustees.

She has also served as the chief of staff for the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, where she is both a Mohs surgeon and the director of the Mohs Micrographic Surgery and Cutaneous Oncology Fellowship.

Dr.

Van Beek has chaired multiple national dermatology and legislative councils, including the American Academy of Dermatology's Congressional Policy Committee and Council of Government Affairs and Health Policy.

That's for sure.

You are exactly right.

I mean, it's a really hard way to learn the lesson, but I would say after they've had Mohs micrographic surgery or even a simple wide local excision, they are much more proactive about sun protection then.

The age group varied from about 40s up until around about 90 years of age, and they were all done as, uh, pretty much single stage procedures, Damien.

So there wasn't the need to do these under MOHS.

You, you certainly could deal with these skin cancers under MOHS, but I think in good hands with basal cell carcinomas, most of the time you know where your margins are, um, and it can all be done as a single stage procedure.

Uh, given the age cohort of the patients with a lot of these elderly patients, and sometimes these patients have other comorbidities, 90, over 90% of these cases were done under local anesthetic with intravenous sedation.

So there was only a very small number of cases that were actually needed a general anesthetic So local with sedation as day case type procedures.