Mr. Onur Gilleard
Qualifications & Experience
Mr Onur Gilleard is a distinguished consultant plastic surgeon on the GMC specialist register. He previously held an NHS consultant post at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, specialising in skin cancer and microsurgical reconstruction. In 2021, Mr Gilleard transitioned from the NHS to dedicate himself fully to private practice, allowing him to focus exclusively on providing personalised, high-quality care to his patients. He is recognised as an expert in laser treatments, having conducted research and developed advanced treatment protocols using cutting-edge laser technology to optimise both clinical outcomes and cosmetic results.
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No. A skin tag removed properly — taken off at its base — does not grow back. That particular tag is gone permanently. What people call “regrowth” is almost always one of three other things: a new tag forming nearby, an incomplete removal that left part of the base behind, or a tag that was never fully removed by a DIY kit in the first place. Telling those apart matters, because two of them are fixable in one appointment and one of them is simply your skin doing what it has always done. This guide separates them, and explains when a sudden crop of new tags is worth a blood test rather than a scalpel.
The Short Answer, Before You Read Further
When a skin tag is reported to have grown back, the useful question is not whether tags return, but which of three distinct events has occurred. The distinction is made on site and timing:
- Same spot, within weeks
- The base was left behind; the lesion never fully resolved — the usual finding.
- Nearby, months or years later
- A new tag. The first one is gone for good; your skin simply made another — why that keeps happening.
- Frozen, and it partly came away
- An incomplete first treatment, not regrowth — how each method behaves.
Where a group of new tags has appeared over a short period, a separate question applies — one raised routinely with neck-cluster patients. Prices and how removal works are further down.
Regrowth, New Tag, or Leftover Base?
Three different things get described as a tag “coming back”. They look similar to the person it is happening to and are completely different clinically.
| True regrowth | Leftover base | A new tag | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Does it happen? | No, not after complete removal | Yes — the usual culprit | Yes — very common |
| Where | — | Exactly the original spot | Nearby, or another friction site |
| Timing | — | Weeks — it never fully went | Months to years later |
| Usual cause | — | DIY kit, thread ligation, or removal that stopped short of the base | Ongoing friction, hormones, insulin resistance, age |
| Fix | — | One proper removal at the base | Remove as needed; address the driver |
Why a Properly Removed Tag Cannot Return
A skin tag is a discrete little outgrowth of skin on a stalk. Remove the stalk at the point where it meets normal skin and there is nothing left to regrow from — unlike a wart, which is driven by a virus in the surrounding skin, or a cyst, which regrows if any of its capsule is left behind.
In practice this means one of three techniques, selected according to the lesion rather than from a fixed price list:
- Snip excision
- Fine scissors under local anaesthetic for small, narrow-stalked tags. Seconds per tag, no stitches.
- Hyfrecation (electrosurgery)
- A fine electrical tip that removes and seals in a single step; generally preferred on the face, where precision matters more than speed. Read how electrosurgery works.
- Formal excision
- For large or broad-based tags: the tag is excised at the base, the base is cauterised, and the wound is closed with a dissolvable suture. Compared with the shave approach in shave vs excision.
Cryotherapy is also offered, and is used for skin tags at patient request. Its real advantage is that it needs no local anaesthetic — nothing is injected. The trade-offs are worth knowing before you choose it. If the tag does not come away completely after the first freeze, a second visit is needed to repeat it — which is one of the situations people later describe as the tag “coming back”, when in fact the first treatment simply had not finished. Freezing also carries a potentially higher chance of hypopigmentation — a permanent pale patch — than the other methods, which matters most on the neck and in darker skin tones (Higgins et al., American Family Physician, 2015). Snip excision, hyfrecation and formal excision all remove the tag at its base in one pass under local anaesthetic. Which suits you is a conversation at consultation, not a fixed rule.
“It Came Back in Exactly the Same Place”
When a tag reappears in the identical spot within a few weeks, it almost never regrew. It was never fully removed. The base — the few millimetres of tissue where the stalk meets the skin — was left behind, and it simply carried on being a tag.
This is the predictable outcome of most home methods, and the results present regularly in clinic:
- Thread or ligation bands. Patients present with half-strangled tags — black, painful, infected, and still firmly attached. The band cuts circulation without ever removing the base.
- Over-the-counter freeze kits. Often what is left is a pale scarred patch where the tag used to be. The tag went; something harder to fix arrived in its place.
- Scissors at home. Bleeding that frightens people, because tags have a feeding vessel — and a bathroom is not a sterile field.
- Cautery taken too deep by an inexperienced operator. A pitted, sunken scar instead of a raised tag.
The full catalogue, with what each one actually does to the skin, is in skin tag removal gone wrong and DIY removal tools.
A leftover base is straightforward to deal with: it is removed properly, once, at the base. The awkward part is that the second attempt now has to work around whatever scarring the first one caused.
Why New Tags Keep Appearing
“A tag removed at its base does not come back. But the tendency to form tags carries on — friction sites, skin type, metabolic factors — so new ones appear elsewhere. That is biology, not failed treatment.”— Mr Onur Gilleard, Consultant Plastic Surgeon
Skin tags are extremely common, and they cluster where skin rubs on skin or on clothing. A classic European study found tags in 46% of adults, most often in the armpits and on the neck, with prevalence rising with age (Banik & Lubach, Dermatologica, 1987). If your neck produced one tag, the same neck is quite capable of producing another — and it will not be the one you had removed.
The common drivers, in rough order of how often they explain a new crop:
- Friction — collars, straps, jewellery, skin folds. The single most modifiable factor.
- Weight gain — more skin-on-skin contact, plus the metabolic changes below.
- Hormonal change — pregnancy is a classic trigger; some tags settle afterwards, most do not.
- Insulin resistance — the driver worth taking seriously, covered next.
- Age — prevalence climbs steadily through adult life.
When a Crop of New Tags Is Worth Investigating
One new tag means nothing. A sudden group of them, particularly around the neck, is different — and this is where the honest answer to “will I keep getting these?” stops being about skin at all.
The link between skin tags and insulin resistance is real and well documented:
- A 2023 meta-analysis confirmed a significant association between skin tags and insulin resistance (Zohora et al., International Journal of Dermatology).
- In a case-control study, patients with more than 30 tags had diabetes rates above 50% (Rasi et al., Int J Dermatol, 2007).
- Neck and axillary tags remain associated with insulin resistance even after correcting for weight (Tamega et al., An Bras Dermatol, 2010).
- They frequently appear alongside acanthosis nigricans — the dark, velvety skin change on the neck that signals high circulating insulin (Barbato et al., An Bras Dermatol, 2012).
“Skin tags themselves are harmless, but a cluster of new ones can be the skin’s way of hinting at insulin resistance. It’s worth a simple HbA1c blood test with your GP. If it’s normal you’ve lost nothing, and if it’s not, you’ve caught something early.”— Mr Onur Gilleard
An illustrative case. A man in his forties presented with a group of tags that had developed on his neck over approximately a year. The tags were removed and an HbA1c was recommended through his GP. The result fell in the prediabetic range. Two years later, after weight loss and better glycaemic control, he was producing almost no new tags.
Two limits should be placed on that account, because this is an area where online sources tend to overpromise:
- Existing tags do not disappear with better metabolic control. Once formed, a tag stays until it is removed. Nothing you eat, drink or apply will dissolve it.
- Reducing new tag formation through weight loss and improved insulin sensitivity is biologically plausible and consistent with clinical observation, but it has not been demonstrated in clinical trials. That distinction is stated deliberately rather than implying a guarantee.
More on the mechanism and what to ask your GP: skin tags and insulin resistance and why am I getting so many skin tags all of a sudden.
Keeping New Tags to a Minimum
None of this removes what is already there. It changes the rate at which new ones appear.
- Cut the friction. Well-fitting collars and straps, breathable fabrics, keeping folds dry. If a necklace or a bra strap sits exactly where your tags keep appearing, that is not a coincidence.
- Address weight and insulin sensitivity if they are relevant to you — with your GP, not with a supplement.
- Have them removed properly the first time. A complete removal is one appointment; a half-removal is two appointments plus a scar to work around.
- Do not treat a changing lesion as a tag. If something is firm, pigmented, growing quickly or bleeding without being caught, it needs examining rather than removing — see are skin tags dangerous.
Having Them Removed
Every lesion is examined by a consultant plastic surgeon before removal, and in most cases removal takes place at the same visit. Up to 20 to 30 small tags can be treated in a single session; the limiting factors are anaesthetic dose and patient comfort rather than technique. Significant scarring occurs in fewer than 2% of tag removals at this clinic, and snip excision of a narrow-stalked tag frequently leaves no visible mark.
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Consultation | £100 |
| Skin tag removal (first) | £200 |
| Each additional skin tag | £125 |
“Booked online which was super simple. I saw Dr Reza Alamouti — he made me feel at ease from the get go and explained the aftercare to me thoroughly. I’m all healed now and you can barely even notice the scar.”
Full pricing is on our skin tag removal cost guide. To have tags assessed and removed the same day, book skin tag removal in Harley Street or contact the clinic.
Patterns Behind the Phrase “It Came Back”
Four presentations account for the overwhelming majority of reported recurrences, and each has a different explanation. The commonest is home ligation. The tag is tied off with floss or a proprietary band, the visible portion becomes ischaemic and separates, and a firm nodule is noticed in the identical position some weeks later. Nothing has regrown: the base at skin level retains its blood supply from below and persists. Definitive removal is straightforward, but is complicated by whatever inflammatory change the band produced.
The second presentation is the patient treated for a group of tags who returns within a year with new ones and questions whether the original treatment failed. It did not; the treated lesions are gone permanently. The new lesions have formed because the conditions that produced the original crop are unchanged. Where several appear within twelve months in the same region, an HbA1c is a reasonable addition to removal.
The third arises after cryotherapy and reflects a misreading of a known trade-off rather than a failure. A tag that does not separate completely after the first freeze requires a second application; that is the cost of an approach which avoids injected anaesthetic altogether. Repetition beyond a second or third session is the point at which method selection warrants review.
The fourth is uncommon but is the reason every lesion is examined before removal: what has apparently recurred was not a skin tag in the first instance.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Can a skin tag grow back after it’s removed?
- No. A tag removed completely at its base does not grow back — that tag is gone permanently. If something appears in the same spot, it is almost always because part of the base was left behind, which is common after DIY removal. New tags forming nearby are a separate thing and are very common.
- Why has a skin tag come back in exactly the same spot?
- Because the original removal was incomplete. The stalk was taken off but the base, where it meets normal skin, was left with its blood supply intact. Ligation bands, freeze kits and home scissors all tend to do this. One proper removal at the base resolves it.
- Will I keep getting new skin tags?
- Possibly, if the drivers persist — friction, weight, hormones, insulin resistance, age. Tags are found in about 46% of adults and become more common with age. Managing friction and metabolic health reduces the rate; it does not switch the tendency off.
- How soon after removal would a new tag appear?
- A leftover base usually declares itself within a few weeks, because it never really went. A genuinely new tag takes months to years and typically appears nearby rather than in the identical spot. The timing is one of the most useful clues to which of the two you are dealing with.
- Will losing weight make my skin tags go away?
- Not the ones you already have — those stay until they are removed. Weight loss and improved insulin sensitivity may reduce how many new tags form, which fits what we see in clinic, though it has not been proven in clinical trials.
- Should I get a blood test if I keep getting skin tags?
- If a group of new tags has appeared over a short period, especially on the neck, an HbA1c with your GP is worth doing. Patients with more than 30 tags have been found to have diabetes rates above 50%. If it comes back normal you have lost nothing.
- Do you use cryotherapy to remove skin tags?
- Yes — cryotherapy is offered by all of the surgeons at this clinic and is used for skin tags where a patient prefers it. Its advantage is that it needs no local anaesthetic. The trade-offs are that a tag which does not fall off completely after the first freeze needs a second visit, and that freezing carries a potentially higher chance of hypopigmentation than other methods (Higgins et al., 2015). Snip excision, hyfrecation and formal excision are the alternatives, each done under local anaesthetic in one pass.
- Can several tags be removed at once so this stops happening?
- Up to 20 to 30 small tags can be treated in a single session, and each of those is gone for good. It will not stop new ones forming elsewhere, but it does clear the existing crop in one visit. See how many skin tags can be removed at once.
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