There are countless home remedies available on the Internet for removing moles, ranging from astringent and lightening creams to vegetable poultices. However, virtually none of these treatments have been tested or supported by relevant medical studies to measure their effectiveness and safety.

Removing a mole (or a melanocytic nevus) involves completely destroying a large group of melanocytic cells that are clustered together and located under the skin. For this reason, a home or drug treatment is unlikely to eliminate it completely and forever.

There are certain popular techniques for wart removal. These range from cutting out the entire lesion with a razor blade (at home) to tying the base of the wart with a strand of hair until the wart falls off on its own.

These techniques can be potentially dangerous because removing a skin element such as a wart without medical supervision and proper antiseptic care can carry a high risk of infection.

In addition, warts are skin lesions of varying sizes that protrude from the skin. They are incredibly vascularized and can bleed profusely if they are cut. Their removal must be done in a hospital and by qualified personnel to prevent bleeding or infection.

In the days following a laser mole, wart or blemish removal treatment, the patient should watch for a number of normal skin reactions. For example, there is a slight peeling of the skin above the skin lesion, itching, and signs of irritation.

These discomforts are usually well-tolerated and disappear completely on their own after a couple of weeks.

In almost 95 per cent of cases, moles (also called melanocytic nevi) are benign skin lesions, which means that they are completely safe, asymptomatic, and do not pose a risk of becoming malignant. However, in other cases, moles can become malignant and produce more serious and delicate problems. Evaluating whether a mole has become malignant or not is the job of the dermatologist. They will carefully examine the lesion, review the patient's medical history, and obtain a small sample of tissue to take to a laboratory for biopsy. If the result is positive, a treatment plan is drawn up that is appropriate to the patient's needs. However, a benign mole can become malignant and modify some of its characteristics such as:

• Size (they get bigger).
• Colour (they change to darker colours or degrade rapidly).
• Texture (some grow so large that they become palpable).
• Contour (some tend to become irregularly contoured and grow without an apparent pattern).

In other cases, moles may itch, hurt, ooze pus, or bleed. This is a clear indication of a neoplasia process.