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Do perianal skin tags hurt?

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Crohn's Disease
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Posted 10/29/2015 3:53 PM (GMT 0)
Hi,

I went to my colorectal surgeon yesterday because of painful nodules which I suspected were reformed abscesses.

I've had many perianal abscesses in the past and very familiar with how I feel when they are developing, so I felt certain they were.

My surgeon says they are actually skin tags. He said they form as you get older.

Can they spontaneously occur?

None of my doctors has noted them before. I've had many GI visits & three fistulotomies & skin tags were never mentioned.

Are they painful like abscesses?

Thanks so much for your help!
Posted 10/29/2015 4:28 PM (GMT 0)
They don't only form as you get older (he's completely wrong about that) mine started before I even had CD affecting my guts...they came and went all on their own when I was a teen and every dumb doctor that saw them kept telling me they were just hemorrhoid's which made no sense cuz I was never constipated or had diarrhea.

Yes they can spontaneously occur, as I mentioned above, they can disappear quickly on their own too (until you have a baby and they flare up really bad to the point of worse pain in the ass ever literally and they still say they're hemmies so they banded them while in a flare, then that's when all hell broke loose in my guts with CD) so essentially my CD started externally with perianal crohn's skin tags (aka; elephant ears)

They can definitely be painful (but I can't compare the pain to an abscess cuz I've never had any abscess thankfully)
Posted 10/29/2015 4:34 PM (GMT 0)
They can be really painful, especially when rubbed. Some surgeons might try to remove them, but you should really only do that if you don't have Crohn's! I had one removed, but that was because it formed from the friction of the knot on a seton, as opposed to being Crohn's related, if that makes sense. My CR surgeon suggested one time that dipping gauze or a cotton ball in vaseline and then covering the tag might help lessen the pain because the friction of pants, etc. won't rub on them so much.
Posted 10/30/2015 3:13 PM (GMT 0)
My tags are among the worst part of my CD. Yes, they do hurt sometimes. And sometimes it is an ache. The base of them sometimes tear. I had tags before I was diagnosed in my early 20s. My most favorite attentive GI told me....they are really annoying, but they are a good early indicator of you flaring---if my tags start inflaming, I am starting a mini flare to a full flare. Sad to say----my tags just grew immensely in the last few weeks. The only time my tags have been really small was when I was on high dose prednisone. They have shrunk a lot when I was feeling my best. I assume if I went to the bigger meds, I might also see some shrinkage.
Hope that helps
Posted 10/31/2015 6:57 PM (GMT 0)
I had one on my anus when I was diagnosed, and it was extremely irritated, but once I started getting treatment it got so small as to be negligible. The other is in my belly button, and never gets agitated. I suspect it might actually be a form of wart, of which i have several.

I have fissures, though, which are also a good early-warning sign. I use Calmoseptine lotion to keep them from chafing and getting more agitated. I think that, more than anything else, contributed to the suppression of my anal tag. The tag is still there, but it hasn't flared up in like 10 years, and it's more like just a lump, now.
Posted 11/3/2015 9:06 PM (GMT 0)
Thanks so much to all of you for your most helpful advice!

What did you do (tests, biopsy) to verify that your skin tags were precursors to CD? Since I developed abscesses and a complex perianal fistula three years ago, I'd never heard mention of skin tags until my surgeon told me last week.

I'm always wondering do I really have just a fistula like my surgeon has told me or is it perianal disease or PCD and what steps do I need to take to get an accurate diagnosis?

Has anybody been diagnosed with PD (what were your symptoms? were they localized or diffuse?) and what did you or your doctors do to figure it out?

I have an appointment to see my PCP on Friday to help me strategize.

Many thanks again!
Posted 11/3/2015 9:10 PM (GMT 0)
You don't have to do any tests to find out if they're a precurser to crohn's, they are directly related to CD, they are distinctive looking, you can google pics of perianal crohn's skin tags and see they don't even look like hemmies even though that's what many GP's told me they were.
Posted 11/12/2015 9:05 PM (GMT 0)
Thank you so much for this information, pb4. My PCP thinks something systemic is going on and advised me to talk with my gastroenterologist to address the inflammation and skin tags.

I looked at some pictures online of perianal skin tags, which made me wonder where do they usually show up in the perianal area?

Do they feel like hard lumps under the skin (like mine) or do they appear soft like on the surface in the pictures?

Thanks very much again!
Posted 11/13/2015 4:08 PM (GMT 0)
Hi gidget2,

They are right on the anus, they bulge out of the anal skin and are external. They also have what looks like splits in the tags, making appear like it might be 2 separate tags but they're actually one (that's what the big ones look like) smaller tags may not have any splits in them...when in a flare they tend to be quite hard and can be painful, when they are a bit more settled down then they appear soft and it's generally when they're in the "soft stage" they have a chance of shrinking completely back down to normal.

They don't really resemble anything that looks like it's under the skin surface, they protrude out like a tag.
Posted 11/26/2015 1:24 AM (GMT 0)
I have had perianal crohns skintags. Mine actually abscessed and I had it surgically removed. I was in extreme pain before surgery. I was also dealing with severe bleeding fissures and a spastic sphincter. They injected botox in the sphincter which helped sooo much. A few weeks later I developed a major hemroid. It was the size of a golf ball. It had abscessed so they had to remove it.
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