Category: General Health

When to Seek Professional Treatment for Warts

Research and clinical experience shows that most warts go away without any treatment at all. In some cases, you might decide to treat warts on your own, at home. There are times, though, when you will decide that it’s time to seek professional treatment for warts.

If you try to treat warts at home and they only get worse, you should see a doctor. Go in if you have used salicylic acid preparations for three months with little effect. You can see a health care expert about professional removal treatments at this time.

A wart might be located in a spot on your body that is easily irritated. If you have warts like these, you will probably want to seek help. If warts are unsightly, you will want to have someone help you remove the warts just to ease your embarrassment.

Plantar warts can be especially painful. Sometimes they can be so painful that people will go to the emergency room of a hospital to seek care. Whether you go to an urgent care clinic or just to your doctor’s office, you will want help with plantar warts that you can’t remove yourself.

Anyone with diabetes or peripheral artery disease should not try to treat plantar warts or any other warts on their lower extremities. It is always better to have a podiatrist deal with such situations.

There are times when you might mistakenly think something is a wart when it isn’t. If the warts change shape or color, your doctor will probably want to check it to determine what it is. If you’ve never had warts before and you’re past middle age, there’s reason for your doctor to make sure the lesions aren’t actually cancer.

Sometimes warts will grow very large. They can spread very rapidly to many parts of your body. If they become too large or too numerous to deal with by home treatment, see a doctor. There are many appropriate treatments for these more severe problems with warts.

It is possible to get a bacterial infection in a wart. If you have a bacterial infection, you might see red streaks coming from the wart. There might be pus or you might have a fever. The wart might be inflamed with excessive pain, redness, swelling and heat. If you have any of these symptoms, it’s time to check in with a physician.

Even if you only suspect genital warts, you should consider seeking a doctor’s help and advice. If you see any kind of sores, bumps, or warts in your genital area or around your anus, you might have this STD. You might also have burning or itching when you urinate. A discharge can come from the vagina of a woman or the penis of a man.

Abuse is a possible cause if children are found to have genital warts. This is one of the few ways children pick up this strain of the virus. Children should be referred to social services as well as a doctor. Anyone, child or adult, who has genital warts, should go to a doctor.

There are several different types of doctors who treat warts. Family medicine doctors, dermatologists, podiatrists, and pediatricians all do this work. If you have warts that need attention, don’t hesitate to call someone.

What Causes Warts?

Warts of all kinds are annoying and some can even signal danger. It would be nice to prevent them. To have any chance of doing that, you need an idea of what causes warts.

All warts are caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV). This virus gets into the skin at a certain point and infects it. The cells in that area grow very rapidly. A wart is formed at that site.

Warm, moist environments are breeding grounds for many varieties of warts. Anyplace that is wet can be a threat. A shower or locker room floor can be a problem in this area, especially if warm water covers the floor. People can pick up HPV in swimming pools, hot tubs, and saunas.

Skin abnormalities give the virus a place to take hold. If you have an irritation or a rough spot on your skin, it can give rise to a wart. If you are a swimmer, you may have plantar warts because of the combination of the moist environment and rough or broken skin from the surfaces of the pool. Plantar warts get worse because pressure from walking on them pushes them into the skin.

You can also contract HPV at the site of a patch of broken skin. This can be a rash or a cut. It can be a hangnail or a fingernail that you have bitten off very closely. It can even happen with a scrape or a scratch.

You can get common warts following excessive handling, such as in a job, of meat or poultry. The same goes for fish. Working with these foods keeps the skin moist over a long period of time.

HPV also causes genital warts. They are considered a sexually transmitted disease. They can be spread through contact with the throat or the mouth occasionally. Usually, they are contracted through exposure to the genitals or the anus.

Once the HPV is in your system, the warts can be carried to any other place on the body. You do this by scratching or touching them. Then, when you touch another body part, the HPV is spread. If the strain you have is genital warts, the infected areas will be on the genital areas.

You may have genital warts for awhile and they may go away. If this happens, be careful. You can still spread genital warts even if you are showing no signs of the infection. Genital warts are highly contagious, so you should take precautions such as using condoms during sex.

The question may arise as to whether a mother can spread genital warts to a baby when it is being delivered. The answer is that she can, but only rarely. The only time this would be a concern is if the doctor suspects that the warts will bleed excessively. At that point, a cesarean section will probably be performed.
There are many ways that warts can be spread. Some of them have to do with the warm, moist environment that fosters their growth. Some have to do with sexual activity. However HPV is actually the only cause of warts.

Warts: Weighing Up Your Options

In every area of medicine there always new developments being made in diagnostics, preventions, and treatments. Some are genuine improvements based on sound scientific research; others are more a matter of hit-and-miss, and not nearly as helpful as they proclaim to be. All it really takes is becoming adequately informed and exercising a bit of common sense to decide which ones fall into which categories. In doing this, you can then determine what will be the most beneficial for you.

On the subject of treatments for warts, the seemingly-wide range of options available can be broken down into three categories. Each has its own particular benefits, and each has its own particular drawbacks. You should weigh these factors carefully, in order to find the option of treatment which is best for your situation.

Although having your warts removed by a medical professional may initially seem like the most viable course of action, it would be wise to assess the facts about this procedure before dismissing other possibilities. First, while the methods which are currently available are minor procedures, they are indeed surgical procedures. Surgical procedures, regardless of how minor, are never without some degree of risk involved. The main risk involved in having warts removed surgically is that of infection. A skilled professional, as well as a sterile environment, greatly lessen this risk, but it is impossible to eliminate the risk entirely.

Another important factor to consider if you are thinking about having your warts surgically removed is that many people have some degree of apprehension about medical procedures of any type. People who are in this category can be traumatized by any of the aspects of these procedures. The procedures which require either general or local anesthesia may be particularly traumatizing.

Last but not least, one of the main factors to carefully consider is that the surgical removal of warts will be considerably more expensive than any other methods. While you might assume that having them removed professionally will be worthy any extra cost, the fact is that even having them removed by surgical means does not guarantee that they will not return.

The do-it-yourself methods also pose both benefits and drawbacks. There is a very large range of products you can purchase over-the-counter at pharmacies, department stores, and even supermarkets, which are all designed for the purpose of removing warts. Although their effectiveness varies from product to product and from person to person, the drawbacks of these products should be considered before deciding that you wish to purchase one of them for attempting to remove the warts yourself.

First, it is unwise to spend money on a product if you are not certain how to use it correctly, or do not have the ability to do so. Second, incorrect use of these products can cause more harm than their potential benefits. At the very least, incorrect use of over-the-counter wart removal products will result in the product not working, and therefore being a waste of money. You must read and be follow the instructions on the packages, and be willing to use the products for the specific time basis that it requires. This is a special concern for people who have very busy or active lifestyles, for they must ensure that they are willing to take the time necessary to use the product on a regular basis.

Another important concern about over-the-counter wart removal products is that if they are not properly used they can damage healthy skin tissues around the wart. This means you must take special care to keep the product localized on the wart itself, and not allow it to spill onto your skin or clothing.

Home remedies present another option. In general, the only risk involved with most of these home remedies is that they may not work, and the lack of results can be frustrating.

Assessing the pros and cons of these available methods will help you decide on the option which best suits your needs.

Warts In History

It was not until 1950 that it became widely accepted that warts were caused by a virus. The acknowledgment of this fact only came after it was proven by particles of the virus being visible with an electron microscope. Prior to that time, the fact was considered to be nothing more than a theory, even when evidenced by such experiences as that of Dr. Joseph Payne at the end of the nineteenth century. After acquiring warts from treating a patient without using sterile precautions, Dr. Payne theorized that warts are contagious and easily transmittable from one person to another. Scientific proof was necessary before this theory was accepted.

As warts have been around since the beginning of recorded history, so too have the theories of their cause and outrageous attempts at cures. The mummified remains of an Egyptian court musician shows how far back in time warts have been an annoyance to people. The approximate range in time was around 2400-2300 B.C.

While obviously people did not have scientific knowledge, many did believe that warts had some kind of contagious nature to them. Cauterization was attempted as a cure for warts dating as far back as ancient medical texts. Although not a physician, during the time period of approximately 14-34 A.D. Aulus Cornelius Celsus described potential treatments for warts in his text “De Medicina” (On Medicine). The knowledge of warts as a sexually-transmitted disease goes as far back as the Greek and Roman physicians.

Throughout history, knowledge and theory have mixed together for some rather unusual treatment methods. Attempts to remove warts have ranged from the pointless to the bizarre, and included nearly every possibility in between. One of the first known methods of wart removal was in ancient Rome, where an unnamed individual chewed these growths off people’s fingers and feet.

In medieval times, a preferred method for getting rid of warts was spider webs. Still later, people used a method of ashes and pig feces. Later yet, some believed that to cover a wart with a portion of a rotting, dead mouse would aid in clearing up warts. Sir Francis Bacon claimed that he was able to cure warts with melted pig’s fat. It can be assumed that none of these methods were helpful in getting rid of warts. However, King Henry VIII of England granted legal status to anyone who wished to employ odd techniques for wart removal.

In the scientific and medical arenas, the correlation between sexually-transmitted warts and a virual cause began to become acknowledged in the 1920s. This correlation was not fully accepted until a study began in 1954, based on American military who had served in the Korean war bringing genital warts back to the United States and transmitting them to their wives.