What should you know about skin growth removal?

A clinician may identify a cyst, wart, skin tag, inflamed follicle, scar-like lump, or another lesion by looking and feeling the area. A changing, bleeding, crusted, or non-healing growth may need a biopsy rather than cosmetic removal, so the tissue can be examined. [Basal Cell Carcinoma](/conditions/basal-cell-carcinoma/) is one possible diagnosis clinicians consider for some suspicious lesions; a growth alone does not prove it. Painful redness and pus may fit [Boils](/conditions/boils/), while [Skin Lumps](/symptoms/skin-lumps/) explains the broader symptom.

Do not cut, tie off, burn, freeze, or use online acids on a growth. At a consultation, discuss whether observation, shave removal, excision, cautery, freezing, or another method fits the lesion. Ask whether the sample will go to a laboratory, how the wound will be dressed, and how to reduce rubbing and sun exposure during healing. Treatment choice also changes with the body site, skin tone, medicines, and history of raised scars.

Book an assessment if the growth is new and persistent, enlarging, repeatedly irritated, bleeding, ulcerated, painful, or different from nearby marks. Seek urgent care for uncontrolled bleeding, severe pain with fever, rapidly spreading redness, or facial swelling affecting vision or breathing. After removal, contact the clinic for increasing warmth, pus, wound separation, or fever.

Ask what the growth may be, whether removal is medically needed, which method leaves the least disruption at that site, and whether testing is recommended. Clarify wound care, expected healing, scar changes, warning signs, and what happens if the growth returns. Ask whether [Steroid Injection Into The Skin](/treatments/injectables/intralesional-steroid-injection/) has a role for a raised scar or selected inflammatory lump.