Is tender, raised "bruising" normal for a healing cyst, 3 weeks later?
May 16, 2011 8:52 PM   Subscribe

A cyst that was drained on my back 3 weeks ago is still a raised, long-ish bruise (after a doctor followup and cortisone shot last week). How alarming is this?

During my annual skin screening 3 weeks ago, I asked my dermatologist about a bump I had had on my back for close to a year. He said it was a cyst, gave me a numbing shot, "punched the wall" (he said this. I don't know what this means, really, but I can guess.), and drained it. It never went 100% down, but I didn't notice it at all until 2 weeks later, when I realized that it was tender and raised in a slightly diagonal line, pointing away from where it was drained (hard to describe).

I went to the dermatologist for a followup, and he told me that what I was experiencing was similar to bruising, and tracking in the direction of my back muscle, pointing semi-downward because the gravity was pulling it in that direction. He didn't seem concerned in the least, and gave me a cortisone shot to make it go down a little.

This morning (1 week after the followup), I noticed that it was more painful to the touch, potentially longer (though tapering off in shape), and that much more alarming to me. I plan to call my dermatologist and PCP (whichever can see me soonest) to have it checked out tomorrow, but in the mean time I was wondering if anybody's heard about anything like this? No combination of Googling is helping.

Much appreciated in advance :\
posted by anonymous to Health & Fitness (7 answers total)
 
IANAD, but the whole point of removig a cyst is to do so in a way that leaves it intact. Typically you use a scalpal to cut around the cyst then pluck the entire thing out with tweezers. Otherwise, you're got a pretty high risk of infecting the cavity and getting an even bigger cyst or something worse.

Like I said, IANAD but he should have made the incisions, removed the whole thing, then depending on the size of the cavity packed it with gauze.
posted by bardic at 9:02 PM on May 16, 2011 [1 favorite]


I've popped a few of my own cysts myself and they don't seem to really start healing until they are fully drained, so if there's still some pus in there that could be the problem.

Even when they are fully drained, it seems to take a couple months for them to fully heal, because any pressure hard enough to pop and fully drain a cyst is usually also hard enough to leave a nasty bruise. Is it going through the normal bruise color progression?

I think the most worrisome possibility would be some sort of blood poisoning infection spreading from the puncture site. You might want to Google pictures of blood poisoning and compare them to what you're seeing.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:04 PM on May 16, 2011


Ask someone to outline the shape with a pen so you can track the spread of the infection- if it keeps getting bigger, that's a bad sign.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 10:05 PM on May 16, 2011 [2 favorites]


Best answer: The cyst will keep coming back until the sac is removed. Just sucking out the junk in the cyst will not remedy the problem; it will keep coming back. I had one on my back for years. It is really difficult to get doctors to take them seriously. I find this odd, since mine eventually became massively infected and the infection could have spread to my spine. When the surgeon finally went to remove it, he kind of freaked out. He removed what he could. The cyst came back about a year later. I insisted that it be removed immediately. It has been gone for about 4 years so far.
posted by fifilaru at 11:23 PM on May 16, 2011


I had a very large cyst on my upper back. It was infected and leaking pus. My surgeon completely removed it, along with a lot of skin around it (and sent it out for a biopsy). This made healing a little painful because the skin was stretched so tight after it was stitched back together but the cyst has never returned. Go back and insist on complete removal or this cycle will continue.
posted by tommasz at 5:07 AM on May 17, 2011


Go back to the doctor you saw for a second/third look.
posted by TheBones at 5:07 AM on May 17, 2011


Don't pressure your dermatologist to remove it if he does not seem open to the idea - get a referral or find someone who will. I had one removed from my back as a teenager, and it looks like someone went after me with a garden trowel and sewed it up with some random string found on the ground. Like another poster said, I could barely move it was so tight, and well into my 20s I could still feel where he mangled some muscle hacking around in there. On the follow-up visit to get the stitches removed, my mom was all "should it look like that?" and he was all "erm, it was deeper than I thought, probably should have gotten a plastic surgeon."

I don't really care what it looks like now, but I was super self-conscious about it when I was younger and then really resented the deep muscle ache in college when I had to carry a backpack.
posted by Lyn Never at 6:56 AM on May 17, 2011


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