Symptoms, Causes and Treatment of Acrochordon

Posted by sanjay on Thursday 19 Mar 2009

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An acrochordon is a small, mild tumor that affects mainly areas such as the neck, armpits and groin, where the skin forms creases. They also are likely to occur on your face, especially on the eyelids. This is also known as a skin tag, a pedunculated papilloma etc.

This condition is common and in it, the skin projects from the adjacent skin and appears attached to this skin. This varies a lot in appearance. The skin can be irregular or smooth, highly pigmented or flesh colored and simply raised or hanging from a stalk on the skin. They normally vary in size from a grain of rice to the size of a golf ball, although larger ones have been seen. Although skin tags are harmless, they are sometimes irritated by clothing or jewelry and can interfere with shaving and other routine grooming.

What causes an Acrochordon?
If you look through a microscope, you will find that the epidermis has overgrown thereby enclosing the dermis. The reasons for why and how skin tags are formed are not fully known; however, correlation has been established with age and obesity. They have been found to occur in people having diabetes mellitus and in pregnant women. The common causes for occurrence of acrochordons are as follows:
• Irritation and chaffing when skin rubs against skin
• Inherited from ancestors
• Wart virus or human papillomavirus

What are the symptoms of an Acrochordon?
• Normally it’s either small or ½ inch long
• May or may not have a stalk that is narrow
• Situated in body fold areas such as neck, armpits, eyelids and groin
• Normally it has the color of the skin but sometimes it is darker

How to treat Acrochordons?
Under normal circumstances, it is not necessary to treat an acrochordon; however, treatment is necessary if the skin tags are giving irritation and are also not pleasing cosmetically. In such a situation, the following treatments can be given.
1. Cryosurgery, wherein you apply extreme cold to destroy abnormal or diseased tissue
2. Cauterization, wherein the diseased part of the body is burnt using electrocautery and chemical cautery
3. Ligation, by cutting off blood supply
4. Excision using a scalpel or any surgical instrument
In certain cases, an acrochordon has disappeared by taking 200 mcg of chromium picolinate two times a day.