Mike Yao, MD, and Lamiel Watts
After undergoing successful surgery at The Mount Sinai Hospital in May 2017, to have squamous cell carcinoma removed from his right nostril, Lamiel Watts returned to work after four days.
“I went home with very little pain and bleeding,” says Lamiel, who attributed his smooth recovery and lack of anxiety to his physician, Mike Yao, MD, Associate Professor, Otolaryngology. “I had several follow-up appointments with Dr. Yao and a PET/CT scan the following September, which showed no evidence of disease.”
But one month later, while Dr. Yao was examining Lamiel in his office in Mount Sinai Queens, he noticed an extremely tiny lesion in Lamiel’s left nostril. “I knew it wasn’t normal, but I didn’t think it was cancer,” says Dr. Yao.
The lesion, just four millimeters in size, was so small it could only be detected visually on endoscopy, and would not have been picked up on a scan. Unfortunately, the biopsy results came back positive for cancer, and on November 30, Lamiel was back in the operating room having the second lesion removed.
“Today I have no evidence of disease. I believe many other doctors would have taken a wait-and-see approach because I had a clean PET/CT scan a month earlier,” says Lamiel, but Dr. Yao was thorough and meticulous.
“I spend a lot of time with patients and give them ample time to ask questions and understand what comes next,” says Dr. Yao. “Mr. Watts was a wonderful patient, an upbeat, positive man. Luckily, we caught this very early and he did not have any side effects.”