No matter where it grows on your body, having a wart is an undeniable inconvenience. Placing pressure on the wart or jostling it can cause pain, and you have to be careful about what you touch and wash your hands often to avoid spreading the viral growths. Beyond that, warts can be a major source of embarrassment if you know others can see them.
Here at A to Z Dermatology in Casa Grande, Mesa, Sun City, Gold Canyon, and Chandler, Arizona, our expert founder Jayshri Gamoth, MD, and board-certified dermatologist Joyce Kate Forest, MD, diagnose and manage warts and can direct you to a way of removing or treating them. This solves several issues, including the embarrassment of having warts on exposed areas of skin like your hands.
If you’re embarrassed or ashamed of your warts, you’re far from alone. We can help you, and here’s how.
The first step in treating your wart or warts is to make sure you have an accurate diagnosis. A dermatologist can look at the growth and tell you for sure whether it’s a wart and not some other common skin growth, like a skin tag.
Warts come from human papillomavirus (HPV), a viral infection that spreads easily through skin to skin contact. Warts can vary in their appearances, depending on the individual who has them and their location on your body. For example, plantar warts on the soles of your feet tend to be flush against the skin’s surface while other warts are raised and round.
Most warts are flesh-colored, gray, brown, or black in color. If your dermatologist can’t immediately diagnose a wart upon looking at it, a biopsy can confirm that an HPV infection is present.
Treatments for warts aim to control the underlying HPV infection causing the growth. There are multiple treatments out there that can hasten your wart’s departure from your skin, such as:
Topical products like salicylic acid dissolve warts layer by layer. You’ll have to use these products repeatedly to get rid of a wart in its entirety.
Liquid nitrogen is the most common clinical treatment for warts. The liquid freezes the wart, which causes it to blister, die, and eventually peel off.
Surgery is a rare option for wart treatment, but it can treat warts that don’t respond well to other less invasive options. Surgery for warts happens in several ways, including excision with a scalpel or electrosurgery.
You can’t always avoid getting a wart, even if you never directly touch anyone who has one. The HPV virus can spread through contaminated objects, too, like shower floors, doorknobs, and towels. However, you want to do everything you can to avoid getting another wart once you finally get rid of one.
To prevent future warts, or at least reduce your chances of getting them, you should:
As always, you should avoid direct contact with warts on other people and even warts on other parts of your own body, and wash your hands often.
Here at the A to Z Dermatology offices, we’re happy to welcome you in for a treatment consultation for your warts. Schedule an appointment at the office nearest to you by calling the phone number or by using the convenient online booking feature right away.
