A skin tag is a small soft flap of skin, usually where skin rubs on skin. Removal is by snip and cautery or by freezing, takes a few minutes per tag under local anaesthetic, and heals in about 10 days. Removal starts at £395 for a session.
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A skin tag is a small outgrowth of normal skin on a narrow stalk. They sit where skin folds and rubs, on the neck, eyelids, underarms, under the breasts and in the groin. They are harmless, they do not spread, and they do not turn into anything.
People have them removed because they catch on collars, necklaces and razors, or because of where they are. That is a cosmetic reason and it is a legitimate one, and it is priced as such.
Friction and skin folds explain most of them, which is why they cluster where clothing rubs and why they become more common with age and with weight. Pregnancy brings a crop in some women that often settles afterwards.
A large number appearing over a short period is worth a blood test. Multiple skin tags have been associated with insulin resistance, and a fasting glucose and HbA1c are cheap ways to check whether that is what is behind them.International Journal of Dermatology Rasi, 2007
Send us what you are seeing and we will tell you what it is likely to be.
Skin tags are diagnosed by eye and by feel in under a minute. The doctor checks the stalk, the colour and whether the lesion blanches, and looks at the surrounding skin for anything that is not a tag.
A pigmented, firm or bleeding lesion is not treated as a tag. It is examined under dermoscopy, and where features suggest something else the referral thresholds in national guidance apply rather than a cosmetic removal.NICE NG12, 2015
Leaving them alone
They are harmless. A tag that does not catch and does not bother you needs nothing at all.
Home removal kits and thread
Tying off or freezing at home works sometimes and goes wrong in a way that is hard to undo, particularly near the eye. It also treats a lesion nobody has looked at properly.
Cryotherapy
Freezing works well for small tags and leaves no wound to care for. It can lighten the skin around the treated spot, which shows more on darker skin.
Snip and cautery
The tag lifted and cut at the stalk under local anaesthetic, the base sealed. It is immediate, the tag is gone when you leave, and it is what larger tags get. The number treated and the price are agreed before anything starts.General Medical Council GMC guidance, 2020
A snipped tag stops bleeding within a minute and the site scabs for 5 to 10 days. A frozen tag darkens, then dries and drops off over 7 to 14 days. Most people need one session and a small number need a second for stubborn tags.
Infection after this kind of procedure is uncommon and antibiotics are not given to prevent it. Keep the sites clean and dry for 24 hours and watch for spreading redness rather than the normal pink ring around a scab.NICE NG125, 2020
New tags can still appear in the same area afterwards, because the friction that produced them has not changed. Removal treats what is there rather than preventing what comes next.
Count them and note where they are, and take a photograph of each area. A session is priced per session rather than per tag, so knowing the number changes what can be done in one sitting.
If you have gained more than 5kg in the last year, or you have several new tags on the neck and underarms, ask for an HbA1c at the same appointment. A crop of tags is one of the few visible prompts to check glucose, and it is a test worth having whatever you decide about the tags.International Journal of Dermatology Rasi, 2007
An HbA1c of 42 to 47 mmol/mol puts you in the range where structured change in diet and activity roughly halves the chance of going on to develop type 2 diabetes. That is worth knowing at 40 rather than at 55, and the test costs less than a session of tag removal.NICE PH38, 2017
Do not buy a home freezing kit for anything near the eyelid. The margin for error is small and the skin there is thin. A tag near the eye is the one to have done in a clinic even though we would rather you saved the money on the others.
Do not pay for removal of a lesion nobody has examined. A pigmented lesion treated as a tag is a diagnosis missed, and freezing destroys the tissue a laboratory would have read.British Association of Dermatologists BAD guideline, 2022
Step 1
The doctor checks each lesion under dermoscopy and separates the tags from anything that is not one.
Step 2
How many can be treated in one session, which technique suits each site, and what it costs, before anything is done.
Step 3
Snip and cautery under local anaesthetic, or cryotherapy where that suits the site better. You leave with the aftercare and nothing to come back for.
Ask before you book if you are not sure this is the right appointment.
A session is £395 and covers the consultation, the local anaesthetic, the removal and the aftercare. How many tags fit in a session depends on their size and where they are, and you are told the number before anything starts.
Snip and cautery is done under local anaesthetic, so you feel the sting of the injection for a few seconds and pressure after that. Cryotherapy stings for 10 to 20 seconds per tag and needs no injection.
A tag that is removed properly does not return. New ones can appear in the same area, because the rubbing that caused them is still there. That is not the same as regrowth.
No. A true skin tag is benign. What matters is that the lesion is a tag, so anything pigmented, firm, bleeding or growing is examined under dermoscopy before it is treated rather than after.
Yes. Tags on the eyelid margin are done carefully with a shield in place and are the ones least suited to home treatment. Tell us at booking so enough time is set aside.
Not for the tags themselves. Where a number of them have appeared over a few months, an HbA1c and a lipid panel are worth having, because multiple tags have been linked with insulin resistance. The Core panel is £350.
Keep the sites dry for 24 hours, then wash normally and pat dry. No plaster is usually needed. Avoid swimming and saunas until the scabs have gone, which is about 10 days.
This page is general information about a condition and it is not a diagnosis. Treatment depends on what a doctor finds when they examine you, and no outcome is guaranteed. If you are severely unwell, or if any of the warnings at the top of this page apply to you, go to your nearest emergency department or call 999.
British Association of Dermatologists
Guidelines for the management of people with cutaneous melanomaBAD guideline, 2022
General Medical Council
Decision making and consentGMC guidance, 2020
International Journal of Dermatology
Skin tag as a cutaneous marker for impaired carbohydrate metabolism, a case control studyRasi, 2007
NICE
NICE
Type 2 diabetes, prevention in people at high riskPH38, 2017
NICE
Surgical site infections, prevention and treatmentNG125, 2020
Written by the clinical team at The Wellness. Awaiting clinical sign off.
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