Around the area where you received the piercing, you may have noticed a large, lumpy, raised scar. This could be a sign of a keloid, and they can appear on ears or noses. They typically occur in places where an injury is healing. While they can be unattractive, keloids are rarely harmful.
How can I tell if my piercing bump is a keloid or just an irritation bump? If the bump is soft, appears soon after piercing, and doesn't grow beyond the piercing area, it's likely an irritation bump. A keloid usually grows over time, feels firm, and may extend beyond the original wound site.
Keloids can take 3 to 12 months to develop after the original injury. They start as raised scars that can be pink, red, or darker than the skin tone, and can become darker over time.
How to prevent nose piercing bumps
Signs and symptoms might include:
Symptoms of a keloid scar
You can get keloid scars on any part of the body, but they're most common on the chest, shoulders, chin, neck, lower legs and ears. A keloid scar usually grows for months or years and becomes bigger than the original wound. While it's growing, it may feel itchy or painful.
Onset & Timing: Piercing bumps tend to show up soon after the piercing, usually within a few weeks. Keloids, on the other hand, often take months to develop. It's uncommon to get a true keloid only days or weeks after a piercing; most keloids become noticeable 3-12 months post-piercing.
The sooner you seek treatment for a keloid, the more likely you will be to achieve long-lasting results. This overgrowth of collagen that sometimes occurs during the skin's healing process can be challenging to treat and is typically resistant to topical treatments.
What Is the 2:3 Ratio Ear Piercing Rule? The 2:3 ear piercing ratio is a guideline and not a hard-fast rule you must follow. The basic principle is that for every two piercings you have, there should be three units of space between them.
Piercing rejection
Keloids are relatively uncommon but are more common in populations with dark skin tones, with incidence ranging from 4.5–16%. A keloid around a piercing will appear as a round, raised bump that is darker than the surrounding skin.
In fact, they once misdiagnosed a 9-year-old's malignant tumor as a keloid! A skin condition called cutaneous scleroderma can also resemble keloids or hypertrophic scars. This condition is characterized by thickened skin and darkened keloid-like lesions.
A keloid scar (keloid) is a raised scar that grows larger than the wound that caused it. These scars tend to grow slowly — they can take months to years to develop after a skin injury.
You should remove your piercing if you have a keloid. Continuing to keep a piercing in where you have a keloid can continue to cause inflammation and cause that keloid to persist and to grow.
Ear piercing is one of the major risk factors for keloid formation. The majority of piercing is performed through the soft tissue of the earlobe only (zone 1).
After a wound heals, a keloid may form due to excessive collagen production and scar tissue formation. A keloid's appearance usually depends on its location and your skin tone. They typically start as raised scars and tend to grow larger and turn darker over a few months.
There is no right or wrong side of the nose to get a piercing, it is up to you.
Try not to touch or twist your piercing. This can slow down the healing process. Avoid swimming pools, lakes, rivers, and hot tubs until your nose heals.
What are the Symptoms of Keloids?
First, it's important to realize that a keloid often does not occur immediately after the skin injury. Therefore, it may take months after your piercing for one to develop. The primary and most obvious sign is a thick, irregular scar, which often occurs on the earlobes.
They occur most often in patients in their teens and 20s, although they can happen at any age. Black patients are more likely to develop keloids than other patients of color; they occur least commonly in White patients. They can sometimes occur within families.
Location on your skin: A piercing lump develops under the surface of your skin. So, it will only be noticeable when the area is touched. On the other hand, a keloid develops on the surface of the skin, making it much more visible.
After you injure skin, it's likely to take 3 to 12 months or longer to see the first signs of a keloid. The first sign is usually thickening skin. About 20% of keloid scars appear more than a year after the injury.