Joe Biden’s doctor has given the 80-year-old a clean bill of health after “all cancerous tissue was successfully removed.”
US President Joe Biden, 80, successfully had a cancerous skin lesion removed from his chest in February, his doctor has revealed.
The lesion, discovered during a routine medical exam, was a basal cell carcinoma, which “does not tend to ‘spread’ or metastasize,” Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, said in a report released Friday by the White House was made public. .
O’Connor, the White House physician who served as Biden’s physician for many years, said “all cancerous tissue has been successfully removed.”
“No further treatment is needed,” he said in the report.
Biden, the oldest person ever to be president of the US, is expected to declare that he is running for re-election in 2024 and that his health is under scrutiny. His wife Jill Biden has said Biden plans to run, though a formal statement of the president’s intentions has yet to be made.
The lesion was removed during Biden’s annual medical checkup on Feb. 16, after which the president was declared “fit for duty,” according to the report released Friday. Upon being appointed in February, Biden completed a series of tests he began last year at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, a suburban Washington, D.C., complex with a presidential facility.
O’Connor wrote at the time that the president had “spent a lot of time in the sun in his youth” and that he had already received regular treatment for the removal of localized, non-melanoma skin cancers.
“The biopsy site has healed well and the president will continue dermatological monitoring as part of his ongoing comprehensive health care,” O’Connor said in Friday’s report.
“President Biden remains a healthy, vigorous, 80-year-old man, fit to successfully discharge the duties of the presidency, including those of Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” O’Connor said in a statement. February after Biden’s medical exam.
Basal cell carcinoma is a slow-growing cancer that is usually confined to the surface of the skin. Doctors can almost always remove it all with a shallow incision, and it rarely causes serious complications or becomes life-threatening. Basal cell cancers are among the most common and easily treatable cancers, especially if caught early.
The Bidens have long been advocates for the fight against cancer. Their adult son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.
