Mohs Surgery Analysis

Given dermatologists’ concern of skin disease progression due to pandemic-related delays in care, we sought to quantify the impact of the pandemic on the surveillance and treatment of non-melanoma skin cancers (NMSCs) among transplant recipients. A retrospective chart review was conducted at Yale University of all solid organ transplant recipients receiving immunosuppressive therapy that were seen by dermatology between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2021. Data was analyzed using SPSS (version 28.0.0).

In total, 699 patients were included in this study. During the 3 years, 1,217 biopsies were performed, of which 557 were malignant.

Given that the initial COVID-19 lockdown occurred in March of 2020, the time periods of January to March of each year were analyzed. The delay to Mohs was defined as time period from diagnostic biopsy to Mohs surgery (number of days). The delay to Mohs surgery, post-operative defect size, and number of stages were analyzed. We found that when comparing NMSCs biopsied between January and March of 2019 versus 2020, there was a significant delay to Mohs surgery in 2020 (126.0 versus 53.5 days, p=0.03), but there was no significant difference in post-operative defect size (p=0.34) or number of stages (p=0.39).