This is a phrase that is part of the surgical consent.
This phrase is used after discussing the benefits of the surgery. Benefits such as: the basal cell cancer will be removed (so it won't kill you).
Risks of the surgery include but are not limited to : bleeding, infection, death, a poor cosmetic result, scarring, biopsy of anything weird, we find something different from what we expected and take a whole lot of stuff out, death from anesthesia, and in the over 85 crowd, you know, anesthesia acts a bit like a stroke or a traumatic brain injury, really.
Well. Maybe we are not always that thorough. For the last decade, most of my surgical consents were for either biopsying some skin thing or removing a small cancer. For a big skin cancer I would send them on. Especially melanoma, because it tends to metastasize once it hits 9mm thick and also basal cell, which can spread UNDER the skin. So it may be considerably bigger than it looks.
Squamous cell carcinoma is the third skin cancer. I remove them if they are small. A two inch diameter one on the hand: no. That goes to plastic surgery. A three inch melanoma on the calf? Dermatology didn't want it and plastics thought they were wusses. I finally yell at plastics and say, look, the guy is 28. GET HIM IN NOW. They did.
For a biopsy I would say, look, if it's a melanoma, you will need a reexcision. Because you are supposed to take a 1 cm margin all the way around. I do not think it's a melanoma, but if I am wrong, you will be sent to the surgeon or derm or plastics.
For a basal cell, I would send the person to a MOHS surgeon if the margins were not clear. Because under the skin, right? So the MOHS surgeon is dermatology AND pathology, and keeps taking sections until they have The Whole Thing.
The risks include but are not limited to: well, with surgery you never know. One in ten thousand die of the anesthesia. That is, general anesthesia. So not in my little Family Medicine clinic. The person aspirates and gets pneumonia and dies. Or they get pneumonia and have to be intubated and are sick as shit for a while. It's all a bit scary. I was very happy to wake up from my colonoscopy two months ago and 1. not have cancer and 2. not be dead. Yea! So that phrase is in every surgical consent I've ever seen. Because sometimes there is some really weird stuff inside.