Term: wide local excision

Pronunciation: (…LOH-kul ek-SIH-zhun)

Description:

A surgical procedure in which a scalpel (a sharp knife) is used to cut out a tumor or other abnormal lesion and some normal tissue around it. The amount of normal tissue removed depends on how deep or how large the tumor being removed is. A wide local excision is often done to remove some types of skin cancer or breast cancer.