First lady Jill Biden

First Lady Jill Biden had two cancerous lesions removed, the White House said. One was over her right eye and the other on the left side of her chest.

It is a slow-growing cancer that usually is confined to the surface of skin — doctors almost always can remove it all with a shallow incision — and seldom causes serious complications or becomes life-threatening. Basal cell carcinoma is the most curable form of skin cancer. All of the cancerous tissue was successfully removed, O'Connor wrote.

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE (Associated Press). WASHINGTON (AP) — Surgeons removed a cancerous lesion above first lady Jill Biden 's right eye and one on her ...

“This is about the president supporting his wife of 45 years.” The lesions removed from her chest and left eyelid were discovered on Wednesday. The Bidens spent the day at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where the 71-year-old first lady underwent a common outpatient procedure known as Mohs surgery to remove and examine the lesions. The lesion on her left eyelid was “fully excised, with margins, and was sent for standard microscopic examination,” according to O’Connor’s report. It is a slow-growing cancer that usually is confined to the surface of skin — doctors almost always can remove it all with a shallow incision — and seldom causes serious complications or becomes life-threatening. Kevin O’Connor, the physician to President Joe Biden, said examinations showed that the lesion over Jill Biden’s right eye and one newly discovered on her chest were both confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma.

The U.S. First Lady is undergoing a common outpatient procedure 'out of an abundance of caution,' the White House says.

[Canadian Skin Cancer Foundation](https://www.canadianskincancerfoundation.com/skin-cancer/) (CSCF). At the end of the process, according to the Mayo Clinic, the patient and their surgeon will generally discuss how to deal with the resulting wound. First, the area being operated on will be numbed, so that the patient doesn’t feel pain — they are awake during the procedure. It’s generally used on areas of the skin where it’s important to keep as much healthy tissue as possible, such as the face. [According to the Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/11/jill-biden-cancer-skin-lesions/), doctors reported that one lesion above her right eye was basal cell carcinoma, as was the other which was found on the left side of her chest. Article content