What Are Warts? 

Warts come in a variety of shapes and sizes but are usually painless. However, a wart that grows in a spot where you put pressure, like on a finger or on the bottom of the foot, can be painful, so it can be beneficial to see someone about removal.

Warts are skin growths caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV). The virus enters the body through broken skin or small cuts. When the skin is compromised, it causes its top layer to grow rapidly which leads to warts. 

Warts spread easily. You can get infected by sharing towels, razors, or other personal items. It can take months of slow growth before you notice a wart and know that you’re infected. 

However, it’s unlikely you’ll get a wart each time you encounter HPV. Physicians can often tell if a growth is a wart just through visual examination, but they may want to take a sample and look at it under a microscope (a skin biopsy) to rule out the possibility of skin cancer.

Types of Warts 

There are many different types of warts that can affect different body parts, but these are the ones we treat most often. 

Common warts (verruca vulgaris), as the name suggests, are the ones we see most often. They show up on the hands and look like small, textured papules. 

Plantar warts are also quite common. They grow on the soles of the feet, usually on the heels or other weight-bearing areas. The pressure on these warts can cause plantar warts to grow inward under a thick, hard layer of skin also known as a callus. 

Plane warts are small, skin-coloured, and slightly flat. They often show up on the face, but can also occur on the hands or shins. 

How Does Laser Treatment Eliminate Warts? 

If your warts are quite persistent or difficult to treat, you may want to try laser treatment.  Lasers are able to penetrate deep within the skin, to heat the affected tissue. Wart laser treatments destroy the infected tissue and thereby eliminate the lesions. 

It usually only takes two to four treatments to see results, but in some cases, some warts will even respond to a single treatment. 

Warts Laser Treatment Benefits 

If you’ve already tried any number of home remedies for warts, you know how persistent they can be. The major benefit of laser is that it’s very effective within a short timeframe. During the treatment, we use a local anesthetic to numb the area, so it’s also not particularly painful. 

If you’ve been suffering from warts for a long time, it makes sense to choose a treatment that’ll work!

Warts Laser Treatment Aftercare

After your laser wart removal, we’ll always provide you with a full and detailed explanation of how to care for the treated area. It’s really important that you follow our aftercare instructions so that you can heal well with minimal risk of complications or scarring. 

Here are a few of the things you’ll need to keep in mind: 

• Keep the skin bandaged for as long as you’re directed. 
• Keep the area clean by washing it with gentle soap and lukewarm water multiple times throughout the day. We may recommend using a specific cleansing product. 
• Dry the area carefully, and consider using disposable gauze to avoid introducing bacteria to the area. 
• Don’t scratch or touch the treated area at all, especially not with your bare hands. Otherwise, you can risk transferring the HPV to another body part.