What are warts?

Warts are a viral disease that occurs on fingers, toes and the soles of your feet. At first it appears as a small firm bump, but it will become gradually larger and spread to the skin around it. When you observe an individual wart, you can see several black dots. The virus is a type of Human Papilloma virus which is different from the type that causes cervical cancer. The virus enters a small laceration of the skin. If you touch or scratch a wart, it can infect your fingertips.

Treatment

Standard treatment in Japan is freezing them with liquid nitrogen which temperature is -196°C. This is also called cryotherapy. Shaving the hard skin before cryotherapy increases the effectiveness of the treatment. The therapy should be repeated at approximately 2 week intervals. The warts on the sole of the feet are sometimes very resistant to treatment.

Our clinic offers the following treatment methods:
1. Cryotherapy
2. Chinese medicine
– Reimbursed by the Japanese health care insurance
3. CO2 laser
4. V-beam II
5. 5FU ointment
6. Glutaraldehyde
– Not reimbursed

Special attention on the treatment
Cryotherapy causes pain at the time of the treatment. The pain could last for 2 to 3 days afterwards. The treatment may develop blisters and/or blood blisters. If the blisters are broken and the liquid inside comes out, put ointment on it and cover the pertinent area. A hard crust will develop and it will come off in approximately 2 weeks after the cryotherapy. The treatment may last for months and sometimes even years. You should repeat the treatment without long intervals. Otherwise the size of the wart won’t change as it will grow back.