What to expect from electrosurgery for dermatosis papulosa nigra

Dermatosis papulosa nigra causes small, usually harmless dark bumps, often on the face and neck and more noticeable in darker skin tones. After cleansing and suitable numbing, the clinician uses a fine electrosurgical tip to treat individual bumps. The sites can look darker, swollen, or crusted before the surface repairs.

Treatment is chosen bump by bump, with attention to the area, size, number of lesions, and your history of dark marks or raised scars. Similar-looking lesions should be checked if their appearance is uncertain or changing.

Follow the dressing or ointment instructions and cleanse gently. Do not peel crusts, scrub the area, or apply strong active products until the skin has recovered. Reduce friction from masks, collars, or shaving where possible, and use sun protection after the surface has closed to limit lingering colour change.

Before treatment, disclose previous keloids, post-inflammatory darkening, cold sores near the area, medicines, and allergies to local anaesthetic or aftercare products.

Contact the clinic if pain, warmth, redness, swelling, or discharge is increasing, or if a wound is not settling as expected. Seek urgent help for rapidly spreading facial swelling, eye involvement, or breathing difficulty. Arrange review for any lesion that bleeds repeatedly, changes quickly, or fails to behave like the other bumps.

Ask how your skin tone and mark-making history affect the plan, whether all visible bumps should be treated at once, what products to pause, and how recurrence or new bumps will be managed.