What should you know about a small pea-sized lump under the skin?

A lump may feel soft, rubbery, firm, or fixed. A blocked hair follicle can form a tender, red bump; a cyst may sit beneath normal-looking skin and sometimes has a visible pore. A boil is usually painful, warm, and increasingly swollen as inflammation or infection develops. A new or changing growth deserves an examination, especially if it is firm, attached to deeper tissue, crusting, or not settling.

Do not squeeze, pierce, or repeatedly press it. Those actions can irritate the tissue, spread infection, or make the area harder to assess. The symptom category is covered in Skin Lumps.

Note when you first noticed the lump, whether it changes, and whether pain, redness, warmth, drainage, or fever occurs. Keep the skin clean and avoid friction from tight clothing or bags. A warm, clean compress may be soothing for a tender superficial bump, but stop if discomfort increases. Arrange a dermatology assessment if it persists, returns, enlarges, or interferes with movement. Treatment depends on the finding; options can include observation, drainage for a suitable infection, removal of a cyst, or a clinician-administered steroid injection into the skin for selected inflammatory lesions.

Seek prompt medical care for rapidly increasing swelling, spreading redness, marked warmth, pus, fever, severe pain, red streaking, or a lump near the eye. Arrange an appointment for any persistent lump that bleeds, ulcerates, changes appearance, feels fixed, or keeps recurring. A clinician may examine the skin and nearby tissue and decide whether testing is needed; a lump is not diagnosed by appearance alone.

Ask: What features suggest a cyst, boil, or another growth? Should it be measured or checked again? Would imaging, sampling, removal, or treatment be appropriate? What changes should prompt an earlier review?