Is a cryotherapy gun necessary?
I have a freckle/sun spot/age spot the size of a 5p coin on my cheek. It is flat, but my GP wants to blast it with the cryotherapy gun he uses to freeze warts. Is this the best treatment? After all, it’s only a freckle. Dr Fred Kavalier answers your health question: Large, flat, brown areas on the skin of the face and hands are usually caused by sun damage over many years. These spots are often called age spots or liver spots, but the technical name is benign solar lentigines (singular, lentigo). If you remove these spots and look at them under a microscope, they simply contain an excess of pigment-producing skin cells. They are not malignant and do not usually become malignant. If and when they start to become scaly, they are known as solar keratoses. These are caused by further sun damage and do have the potential to become skin cancer. There is no medical need to treat a smooth, flat solar lentigo unless your doctor is concerned that it has features of skin cancer. If the colour of
