Warts can be a huge pain, especially if they’re located on your feet or toes where they’re constantly under pressure or exposed to friction. How do you know when to seek the help of a foot specialist for wart removal?
FootCare Specialist, Inc., with locations in San Mateo and Half Moon Bay, California, provides treatment for a number of podiatric issues, including skin conditions such as foot or toe warts. Dr. David J. Kaplan can assess your warts, then provide the correct type of treatment to help you achieve and maintain a wart-free status.
If you have a wart, here are four reasons to consider professional wart removal treatment.
While warts can appear anywhere on the body, they’re most common on the fingers, hands, toes, and feet. Warts are typically caused by a virus — often the human papillomavirus (HPV). There are more than 150 types of HPV virus, which can spread through skin-to-skin contact or by sharing items like washcloths, shoes, or towels between persons.
Warts can take up to six months to develop after exposure, but can then easily spread to other areas of your body. If you’ve noticed one or more growths that keep getting bigger, multiplying, and refusing to disappear, it’s time to seek professional advice.
Sometimes as warts develop, they become small, grainy growths ranging in size from pinhead to pea, and feel rough to the touch. Whether they appear alone or in clusters, they may contain little black dots, which are actually tiny clotted blood vessels.
A particularly unpleasant kind of foot wart is the plantar wart, which appears on the sole of the foot and grows into your skin instead of out of it. These look like a small hole in your foot surrounded by tough, callused skin. Both these and vascularized warts (warts with a lot of blood vessels leading to them) can be painful, especially when you stand or walk.
While most people think “wart” when a growth appears on their foot, there are some forms of skin cancer that can look very similar to a wart, including squamous cell carcinoma and basal cell carcinoma.
Warts are usually harmless, but skin cancer could be invasive. Signs of a serious issue with a “maybe-wart” include:
We routinely check patients’ feet for a range of skin issues, and can confirm if you have a wart or a more serious condition requiring treatment.
If you have diabetes or any other condition that can lead to poor circulation in your feet, you shouldn’t ignore any changes in your foot health. A wart that doesn’t go away is at risk of tearing or getting scraped or cut, which won’t heal properly. Dr. Kaplan can check for signs of this common problem as part of regular diabetic foot care visits.
To learn more about foot and toe warts and determine what treatment is right for you, schedule a consultation by calling the location closest to you or requesting an appointment online today.
