Plantar Warts

Do you have painful or unsightly warts on your feet or on your children’s feet? Have you tried over the counter wart treatments? Have you been told the success rate is poor? Are you looking for a better solution?

Plantar warts or verruca pedis is one of the most common skin infection mainly affecting young adults with an incidence rate of 5-35%. This is usually transmitted by direct or indirect contact, such as public pools or change rooms.

Warts are caused by the human papillomavirus, the virus typically enters through small breaks in the skin and can remain for up to 8 months before developing into a wart. Typically the warts are benign and often not painful unless located on an area of the foot you walk on such as your heel or the balls of your feet.

The difficulty of treating warts is, there is no current gold standard for wart treatment, with treatments ranging from:

• “Wait and See” – as warts are often self-limiting in 1-2 years 
• Cryotherapy – liquid nitrogen (freezing medicine) applied to the wart with a cotton swab. This method can be painful, hence a numbing agent is usually applied to the area first. The liquid nitrogen forms a blister around the wart, and within a week or so, the dead tissue is cast-off. You may need numerous visits to the Podiatrist every two to four weeks until the wart disappears.
• Salicylic acid – is a prescription-strength peeling medicine that works by removing layers of a wart a little bit at a time. You may need numerous visits to the Podiatrist every two to four weeks until the wart disappears.

Sometimes the best approach is to use a combination of cryotherapy and salicylic acid treatment together. Both methods are also known to stimulate the immune system’s ability to fight the wart.