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Hello, I’m Dr. Neal Schultz
[pause]
and welcome to DermTV.
Today’s topic comes from one of Siobhan’s
viewers from the YouTube
LetzMakeUp channel, that’s L-E-T-Z M-A-K-E
U-P. And the question is what
are those white hard bumps around the eye?
They don’t act like pimples and
they don’t respond to treatment like pimples.
There’s a very good reason-
they’re not pimples. They look like whiteheads
but they’re not. First of
all, they’re usually below the eyes, not
next to the eyes or above it, it’s
usually on the lower lid and they can be white
or yellow, they can be round
or oval and they can be flat topped or sort
of dome shaped. They have a
special name; they have nothing to do with
acne, they’re called syringomas
and syringomas are really enlargements of
sweat ducts, having nothing to do
with oil glands. Let me show you. This is
our favorite diagram of the skin
and this sweat gland is down here in the middle
of the dermis, the middle
layer of the skin and when it makes the sweat
it has to get the sweat up to
the surface of the skin. So it sends it up
through this tube which is
called a sweat duct and as it comes out of
the dermis, the middle layer of
the skin, it enters the epidermis, the upper
layer of the skin. And when
that duct, that tube, going through the epidermis
becomes enlarged, it
forms a syringoma. The enlargement of this
part of the duct forms that
white, hard, round bump. If you squeeze them,
nothing comes out, if you put
a pin in them, nothing comes out because they’re
solid, they’re just
enlargements of those tissues and cells that
make the channel. How do you
treat these? No creams or skincare products
make any difference. If you
come to a dermatologist’s office, each one
individually has to be operated
on, either electrically cauterized or cut
out but there’s no cream that’s
going to make a difference. So, if you have
these little, white, round
bumps of the lower lid and they bother you,
see a dermatologist and he or
she can help remove them but no cream is going
to help take care of this
one.