Laser Treatment for Warts
Plantar warts may not be the most “medically serious” condition you can contract, but they more than make up for that with their peskiness.
Warts can be embarrassing, frustrating, and painful if they happen to be located in a spot on your foot that’s subject to pressure or friction. Even worse, without treatment, they can stick around on your feet for years—and they have a bad habit of multiplying, too. So most people are more than eager to get rid of them.
But because of how warts form, they also can be tricky to get rid of efficiently. Home care has little if any effect, and many popular wart treatments can be painful and frustrating.
One solution you might consider is laser treatment. It’s effective, safe, and the right choice for many patients.
What is Laser Treatment for Plantar Warts?
First, a quick breakdown of what warts themselves are.
Essentially, a wart is a small, benign growth of skin that develops when a strain of human papillomavirus, or HPV, infects the upper layers of skin. The wart is supplied by blood vessels, but the infection itself tends to go unnoticed by the immune system due to its position near the surface of the skin. That’s one reason why they can last so long, and why many treatments tend to have mixed success rates.
Laser therapy for warts uses a high-power medical laser that’s capable of both cutting off blood supply to the wart and destroying the virus that’s responsible. With its blood supply gone, the wart ultimately dies and falls off.
As with other treatments for warts, multiple sessions are often required to fully eradicate the wart. We’ll discuss what you can expect from a full treatment course at your initial appointment.
Potential Advantages of Laser Treatment for Plantar Warts
So why would you choose laser treatment over a more conventional approach, like using a peeling acid or cryotherapy? Here are some of the main benefits:
- Highly effective. Laser therapy has one of the highest overall success rates among treatments commonly provided for plantar warts.
- Less painful. Most people find laser therapy to be more comfortable than salicylic acid or liquid nitrogen, which can require 10-20 minutes of scraping with a scalpel or may produce blistering. Laser treatment also is over sooner, and tends to not have much lingering discomfort.
- More precise. Using a laser allows us to target the wart with a high level of precision, minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissue when compared to traditional surgery, salicylic acid and cryotherapy.
- Track record of safety. Medical lasers have been used to address a wide variety of conditions for many years now, and laser therapy for wart removal has an excellent track record. There are few contraindications, a low rate of complications, and normally no scarring.
Is Laser Wart Treatment Right for Me?
Laser therapy is just one of the treatment options we perform for warts. In some cases, a more conventional approach might be better.
Laser therapy might be considered if conventional wart treatments haven’t worked, or if your warts are especially numerous or especially large. It all depends on your personal situation and preferences.
That said, many patients do choose laser therapy for its efficiency and convenience. And even those who go a different route appreciate that we have it available in case a more aggressive treatment route is ultimately needed later.
For more information on our laser treatment for warts, or to request your appointment, either contact us online right now or give our office a call at (937) 435-7477.
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