Should a mole be removed?

Most moles don’t need to be removed for medical reasons. The majority are normal and harmless parts of normal skin.

In some cases, moles should be removed:

• If the appearance resembles skin cancer and the mole needs to be biopsied to confirm the diagnosis.
• If the mole is painful, bleeding or causing other symptoms.
• If the mole is growing or changing in a way that resembles skin cancer.

If this is true for any of your moles, you should consult a doctor immediately. An accredited skin cancer doctor or dermatologist can recommend the right procedure to have the mole removed and tested to see if it is cancerous. Based on the results, they can make recommendations for further treatments if necessary to optimise the health outcome.

But sometimes people want to remove moles because they don’t like the appearance. This is especially common for moles on the face. In this situation, it’s possible to remove a mole for cosmetic rather than medical reasons. This means it’s necessary to consider how the area will look after the mole is removed (in other words, how much scarring is likely from mole removal?)

We use procedures that we believe cause the least scarring for the given type of mole or skin lesion. For example:

• Q-switch ablative or non-ablative laser for flat or small raised lesions such as junctional and compound moles, angiomas, telangiectasia, warts, seborrheic keratoses and more. This method is useful for people with large numbers of moles to be removed, especially if they are flat.
• Radiofrequency surgery for raised moles, seborrhoeic keratoses, skin tags, sebaceous hyperplasia
• Intense pulsed light for flatter and superficial (shallow) lesions such as freckles, angiomas, spider veins and broken capillaries