• In a #tbt clip, Dr. Pimple Popper revisits a gnarly pop from this summer.
• In the clip, Dr. Pimple Popper yanks browned, liquidy skin cells from an opening in the back of a man’s neck that vaguely resemble cement being poured.
• Lee tries to determine if it’s a pilar cyst or epidermoid cyst and decides it’s probably an epidermoid because of the thinness of the sac wall.
On Instagram today, Dr. Pimple Popper posted a particularly gnarly #tbt clip in which she yanks a cyst full of brown-ish dregs and bloody pulp that looks like cement. It’s the kind of highlight that inspires nostalgia in Dr. Lee, apparently. A longer video showing the surgery was originally posted on the TLC star’s YouTube channel in June of last year.
In the clip, using scissors and tongs, Lee patiently struggles with the long stream of cyst goo and tries to determine if this is a pilar or epidermoid cyst. “It has an outside sac wall but this is thinner so I think it’s an epidermoid cyst,” she says.
Their coatings are one of the defining differences between pilars and epidermoids, both of which have made numerous appearances in Dr. Pimple Popper videos.
Pilars cysts form from misplaced keratin and often develop around hair follicles (making them common on the head or nearby). They tend to be lumpy and full of fluid and develop a thick coat. The wall makes them “thicker and has a wall so they pop out all whole” and they have “more of an olive texture,” Lee explains in the longer video from June.
Epidermoids are the outgrowths of misplaced dead skin cells that borrow deeper into the skin and then develop their own keratin production operations that inflate them. They have less of a sac wall. In any case, you can see the monstrosity of browned, liquidy skin cells with a cherry red outer wall extracted from the man at the end of the original video.
Watch the clip here: