Former President Joe Biden has sparked health concerns after stepping out in Delaware with a large scar across his forehead.
The 82-year-old was seen looking frail in new footage leaving a church in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware with what appears to be a large gash on his head.
The footage, initially shared by Inside Edition, was captured by local Fred Karger, who informed the outlet that close up, it looked like a scar from skin cancer surgery.
The night before, he was also seen at a local ice cream shop wearing a baseball cap that appeared to cover the injury.
Biden’s spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Mail on Thursday that the former president recently underwent Mohs surgery.
The procedure involves the removal of thin layers of skin cancer to assess the disease’s depth, and former First Lady Jill Biden had a similar surgery in early 2023.
In August, Biden was observed with a bandage covering the same spot on his forehead at the funeral for former governor and U.S. Representative Mike Castle.
The encounter with skin cancer follows Biden’s prior surgery for removing a basal cell carcinoma from his chest in 2023, and he is also receiving treatment for stage four prostate cancer.
Former President Joe Biden stunned locals in Delaware as he stepped out with a large scar across his forehead
The 82-year-old was seen in new footage leaving a church in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware with what appears to be a large gash on his head
The night before, Biden was also seen at a local ice cream shop wearing a baseball cap that appeared to cover the injury
This came months after Biden shocked the nation by announcing his diagnosis with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bones.
Leading doctors stated it was ‘inconceivable’ that the former president’s condition could have remained undetected for his four years in office before spreading throughout his body.
His cancer was given a Gleason score of 9 and a Grade Group of 5, a dire stage of the rapidly-spreading disease. The diagnosis came days after doctors found a ‘small nodule’ on his prostate, doctors said at the time.
Upon hearing the news, some of America’s top doctors also questioned how a former president could be diagnosed with late stage prostate cancer – which can be detected early with routine bloodwork recommended for all men over the age of 50.
In August, Biden was also seen with a bandage covering the same spot on his forehead at the funeral for former governor and U.S. Representative Mike Castle
‘It is inconceivable that this was not being followed before he left the Presidency,’ wrote Dr. Howie Forman, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging, public health management and economics at Yale.
He noted that the test for prostate-specific antigen would have shown he had cancer ‘for some time before this diagnosis’, given how aggressive it is.
In February 2024, when Biden was the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, his longtime physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor deemed him ‘fit to serve’ following a routine physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Following the news of Biden’s diagnosis, Donald Trump Jr took to social media just hours later to call out the unlikelihood that it would have been missed for so long.
He questioned if there was a ‘coverup’ by sharing a screengrab of a post from physician Dr. Steven Quay, who called prostate cancer ‘the easiest cancer to diagnose when it first starts and to watch it progress to bone metastases.’
Biden’s appearance in public comes days after his daughter Ashley exposed her husband’s alleged affair as she announced that she was filing for divorce.
To remove his cancer, Biden underwent Mohs surgery, which is used to remove certain types of skin cancers including some melanomas, basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and other less common skin cancers.
It is performed in an outpatient setting and typically takes a few hours. Patients are able to remain awake for the surgery, which requires just local anesthesia to numb the area.
The objective of a Mohs procedure is to excise as much cancerous skin tissue as possible while also doing as little damage to the surrounding healthy tissue as possible. It’s a gradual process and layers of skin are removed in steps.
First, the surgeon uses a scalpel to remove the surface level cancerous skin tissue with the understanding that there might be more cancerous tissue beneath the surface as the bulk of skin cancer is usually hidden under the surface.
The surgeon maps out where on the body the cancerous tissue was extracted, takes that tissue sample to the lab, dyes it, and cuts it into sections. Specialized technicians place those tissue samples on slides to be investigated under the microscope.
The doctor then examines the edges of each section of tissue for evidence of remaining cancer. If the surgeon finds cancer cells under the microscope, their location is marked on the map.
The process is repeated until the doctor finds no evidence of cancer in the sampled tissue.
Some wounds will be big enough to require sutures to close. They typically heal within a couple of weeks. Smaller wounds can heal by themselves in about a month.
Typically people are able to leave between two and six hours after the outpatient surgery, though the timing depends on the size of the area effected.
The procedure is extremely common. Mohs surgery is performed on 876,000 skin cancers per year in the United States.
