- Dr. Pimple Popper treated a woman with a "bossy" lipoma, or fat-filled growth.
- The lump grew for six years and became embedded under the skin, so it was difficult to remove in one pop.
- Instead, Dr. Pimple Popper used scissors, tweezers, and her fingers to loosen the lipoma.
Celebrity dermatologist Dr. Sandra Lee, better known by her stage name Dr. Pimple Popper, has had no shortage of lumps and bumps to pop throughout the pandemic.
In a March 24 YouTube video, Dr. Pimple Popper shared her latest patient's treatment, which involved cutting into an orange-sized lipoma on her shoulder blade.
A lipoma is a fat-filled growth that sits between a person's muscle layer and skin layer. Typically, lipomas grow slowly and are fairly small - about two inches in diameter, according to the Mayo Clinic.
In this woman's case, her lipoma grew for six years and became larger and more visible, so she decided to have it removed. According to Lee, some lipomas, though non-cancerous, can feel uncomfortable if they grow in certain areas like at the base of the neck.
In those cases, removal can help.
To treat the woman, Dr. Pimple Popper first injected a numbing solution around the area. Then she made an incision through the lipoma's center with a surgical blade, revealing a lumpy and yellow fat deposit underneath the skin's surface.
Next, Lee used her fingers and the tip of her scissors to dig into the incision. She also squeezed around the outside of the growth in an attempt to push it out of the woman's skin.
Lipomas are encapsulated in a thin sac underneath the skin's surface, which often allows them to "pop" out of the skin in one squeeze, Dr. Pimple Popper explained in the video's description.
After wrestling with the lipoma for a few minutes, a fat deposit breached the surface and Dr. Pimple Popper was able to cut it away. Still, she didn't get the lipoma in its entirety because fibers under the woman's skin acted like "netting," holding the lipoma in place, said Lee.
As she continued to squeeze and push around the skin, Lee called the growth "a pest" and "bossy" because of its difficult-to-remove-nature.
Ten minutes later, Dr. Pimple Popper was able to grab the remaining lump of fat with tweezers and pull it out of the skin, leaving a gaping hole.
She stitched up the wound with surgical stitches and instructed the patient to minimize her shoulder movement for the next 10 days.
Lee also explained to the patient that her difficult case wasn't surprising, since skin on the back is usually thicker and makes lipomas more susceptible to getting stuck like hers did.