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What Causes Bump On The Genital Area?
I had a very small bump on my genital area- between my anus and vagina- for about 2 years, and no doctor ever said anything about it at either of my paps. One day I went to get STD tested, and the nurse said I was negative for everything except it looked like I had HPV. She gave me aldara cream, which made it smaller, but when I stopped using it, it came right back in the same spot. I then went to my regular gyno about 6 months later, and he said it looked like a skin tag.I told him that the nurse at Planned Parenthood said it was hpv, and so my gyno used acid to take it away. It went away but then grew back a few months later. A few months ago I got a refill on aldera cream and it went away again and so far hasn't come back. I guess my questions are: is it easy to misdiagnose skin tags for warts? And would it even be possible for aldara to take a skin tag away? I guess I'm sure that a part of me wishes that the gyno was right that it was a skin tag, but then why would he have willingly used acid as if to treat a wart?
Thu, 16 Oct 2014
Hello. Thanks for writing to us at healthcaremagic
The fact that it responded to Aldara, (Imiquimod), a topical Immunomodulator for the treatment of viral warts, indicates that it was most likely a wart.
A skin tag would not respond to Imiquimod.
Further evidence that it was indeed a wart is that it grew back to the same size once you stopped applying Aldara and also recurred once after acid treatment.
Recurrence is a feature which goes more in favour of warts.
Clinically, a wart can be confused with a skin tag specially if it is a solitary lesion. Therefore, your gynaecologist must have acid treated it, probably because he must have thought that even though clinically it is less likely to be a wart but even at the slightest of doubt it is always better to treat it as a wart.
Regards
The fact that it responded to Aldara, (Imiquimod), a topical Immunomodulator for the treatment of viral warts, indicates that it was most likely a wart.
A skin tag would not respond to Imiquimod.
Further evidence that it was indeed a wart is that it grew back to the same size once you stopped applying Aldara and also recurred once after acid treatment.
Recurrence is a feature which goes more in favour of warts.
Clinically, a wart can be confused with a skin tag specially if it is a solitary lesion. Therefore, your gynaecologist must have acid treated it, probably because he must have thought that even though clinically it is less likely to be a wart but even at the slightest of doubt it is always better to treat it as a wart.
Regards
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