New Surgeon Joins Keesler Medical
By Michael Newsom, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss.
Sep. 3–Keesler Medical Center’s dermatology clinic recently added a surgeon with a unique specialty known as Mohs micrographic surgery.
The procedure helps increase effectiveness while also lessening the damage caused by the removal of flesh during skin cancer-related operations.
Lt. Col. (Dr.) Steven Ritter, officer in charge of the 81st Medical Operations Squadron dermatology element, specializes in Mohs surgery and he recently joined Maj. (Dr.) Charles Greeson on the base’s dermatology team.
The procedure allows the surgeon to work with frozen sections of skin. In a base news release, Ritter said the benefits are many.
“While completely removing a skin cancer it results in smaller surgical defects permitting optimal cosmetic outcomes,” Ritter said. “It can be performed in conjunction with other specialty services such as plastic surgery, ENT surgery and ophthalmology, expanding its usefulness to skin cancers anywhere on the body.”
Ritter said the process is repeated in small pieces until the desired result is achieved.
“We remove skin from a patient and immediately screen it for cancer,” Ritter said. “If we see any of the tumor remains, we go back and remove more skin. We do this until the tumor is completely removed.”
Ritter arrived on base July 2 after he finished a one-year fellowship during which he learned the surgery at Vanderbilt University. Keesler and Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, are the only two Air Force hospitals that offer the surgery.
National Guard
Some 150 members of the Brandon-based 113th Military Police Company will be honored in a sendoff ceremony Tuesday. The soldiers have been training for deployment over the past few weeks by sharpening their urban-warfare skills and search techniques, and learning tactics to avoid improvised explosive devices. The sendoff event is to be held at Dogwood Lake.
Last week, Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, 1st Army commander, visited Camp Shelby to see the base’s “Theater Immersion” training, which includes cordon, improvised explosive devices, and other training.
This day in military history
On Sept. 3, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany after Hitler’s forces invaded Poland, according to the History Channel’s Web site.
France and Germany were allies of Poland and the invasion prompted the declaration, but not long after, a German U-30 submarine sank the British ocean liner Athenia, after the sub’s crew “assumed the liner was armed and belligerent,” according to the Web site. More than 1,100 passengers were on board and 28 of them were from the United States.
But President Franklin D. Roosevelt greeted the sinking of the Athenia with caution and declared it would be wrong for anyone to “thoughtlessly or falsely talk of America sending its armies to European fields” and the United States remained neutral.
Britain’s immediate response was also limited, as the country decided to drop some 13 tons of anti-Nazi propaganda leaflets over Germany. But by mid-September 1939, both the French and British had commenced offensives against the Germans, the Web site said.
—–
To see more of The Sun Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sunherald.com.
Copyright (c) 2007, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.