Skin Lesions

Skin lesions are very common and range from harmless lumps and bumps through to more serious conditions including malignant melanomas, basal cell carcinomas and squamous cell carcinomas. Our general policy is to remove any lesion which has the potential to become nasty.

It is usually possible to make a diagnosis by simply inspecting the lesion and in general we would advise that all lumps are removed and sent for histological examination. The most commonly found lumps include lipomas, areas of fatty tissue, sebaceous cysts (these are the oil glands located within the skin) and lumps in association with scars all of which are harmless.

Most of these can be excised using local anaesthetic after which the wounds are closed using a buried dissolvable suture, often leaving no scar. Any skin lesion which looks suspicious is usually excised with a wide margin and sent for histological examination and further treatment may be required once that information is available.

We are able to offer an advisory service on the importance of removing these lesions and also long-term follow up after the procedure.