- Dr. Pimple Popper treated a man with a cyst just inches away from his mouth.
- When she squeezed the cyst, it released a thick gray substance, and she had to be careful to keep it away from the patient's mouth.
- Dr. Pimple Popper said her goal was to make the smallest incision possible to prevent scarring on the man's face.
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In a recent video, Dr. Pimple Popper helped a man with a cheek cyst filled with chunky gray pus. The cyst's location, just inches from the man's mouth, made the treatment precarious.
The cyst was an epidermoid cyst, a type of cyst that occurs when skin cells burrow and multiply underneath the skin, according to the Mayo Clinic. Usually, epidermoid cysts grow slowly and aren't painful. They are, however, filled with a cheese-like pus that can smell and sometimes become inflamed, according to Dr. Pimple Popper.
To treat the man, Dr. Pimple Popper first covered his eyes with a cloth, only leaving his nose, mouth, and cheek showing. She also numbed the area with an injectable solution off-camera.
Then, Dr. Pimple Popper, whose real name is dermatologist Dr. Sandra Lee, used a blade to slice through the cyst's center. She said she made the incision as small as possible to avoid a large scar on the patient's face.
Once Dr. Pimple Popper made the incision, she opened it further with scissors and then placed her thumb and index finger on either side of the growth, preparing to release its insides.
"I'm going to give it a little squeeze, like grandma is pinching your cheek," Lee told the man.
As soon as Lee applied pressure, a thick gray substance erupted from the incision in small chunks. She grabbed the pus, which was made up of trapped dead skin cells, and removed it from the man's cheek right away so it wouldn't come into contact with his mouth.
Her goal was the squeeze out as much of the cyst's innards as possible, to avoid creating a deeper incision and bigger scar.
There was some cyst contents left, so Dr. Pimple Popper injected the growth with more numbing solution. The she used scissors and tweezers to remove the remaining bits.
Finally, she stitched up the incision so it could heal.