- Dr.
Pimple Popper squeezed, snipped, and pulled bits of fat out of a patient's lipoma, which had been growing on him for five years. - Lee was able to remove the bulk of the lipoma at once, but then found tiny bits hidden in "secret pockets" underneath the patient's skin.
- She said discovering and removing these little fat stores was like "mining for gold."
Some of Dr. Pimple Popper's most eye-catching treatments are those with surprises, and a recent $4 extraction shared by the celebrity dermatologist$4 was no different.
In the December 16 video, Dr. Pimple Popper, $4, treated a social media manager with a lipoma that'd been growing over the past five years. It was unclear where the lipoma was on his body, since the entire video was zoomed in on the growth itself.
A lipoma is a type of fat-filled growth that sits between a person's muscle layer and skin layer. As Lee said in the video, lipomas occur when a fat cell multiplies and "creates its own little world," under the skin.
Typically, $4 and are fairly small - about two inches in diameter according to the Mayo Clinic. A lipoma is usually non-cancerous, but if it feels painful or it bothers the person who has it, a dermatologist can remove the growth.
That's what Lee did, first by cutting a three-inch incision through the lump. Then she used scissors to widen the opening and a cauterizing pen to stop bleeding, making it easier for her to see where to pull the growth out.
Next, Dr. Pimple Popper used her fingers to dig around inside of the incision and squeeze around it, loosening bits of fat from the lipoma growth.
At first, she could only remove a small chunk of fat. But then she squeezed around the growth and a wet, yellow, and chunky mass popped to the surface. She snipped that portion away and continued cutting and squeezing until the majority of the lipoma was removed and only a cavity remained in the patient's skin.
Dr. Pimple Popper thought her work was done, but when she double-checked the area before stitching it up, she discovered more lipoma-filled "pockets."
In the video caption, Lee said finding these tucked away lipoma bits was like "mining for gold."
"It's like a little pocket that's hidden and you don't know where the opening is, and you got to fiddle around a little bit" Lee said in the video. She also said removing these tiny lipoma bits is important, because if she doesn't they could grow back.
Once Lee removed all of the lipoma, she used surgical stitches to close the cavity left in the patient's skin.