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.
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.
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.
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!
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:
Removal of warts through laser treatment is extremely successful. This treatment employs a specific wavelength to destroy the wart tissue. Depending on the number to be removed or size of the treatment area, local anesthetic may be used. Usually, two to four treatments are required, with an interval of about three to four weeks between treatments.
The wart doesn’t exactly fall off. In fact, after your wart laser treatment, the area where the wart was will actually look indented and may even feel tender. Healing usually takes around two weeks, and after that, your skin will likely return to normal (although in some cases, multiple treatments might be necessary).
You will probably need anywhere from one to three sessions depending on the kinds of warts you have. Common warts often disappear within a single treatment, while deeper warts may require a few sessions. If you get in touch with us, we’ll be happy to give you an estimate of how many wart laser treatments we think you’ll need.
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