A plantar wart is a small but hard grainy growth which can appear on the pressure areas like balls or heels of your feet. Sometimes these warts grow inward beneath a thick and hard layer of skin called callus. Warts generally attack teenagers and children. Sometimes these warts attack people with weak immune systems or people who walk barefoot in a wart causing virus area.
Causes of Plantar Wart:
Plantar warts are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) which might enter the skin through breaks, cuts, weak spots at the bottom of the feet, cracks in dry skin or a wet, soft and fragile skin in water for a long time. HPV strains that causes plantar warts is not a contagious virus but it is mostly found in warm and moist environments.
Symptoms:
The symptoms of a Plantar Wart are a small grainy lesion at the bottom of the feet or a hard thickened skin which has grown inward. They might also appear to be like black pinpoints which are called wart seeds. Wart seeds are basically blood clots or patients may find a lesion in the foot that interrupts the normal ridges and lines in the skin. The tenderness or pain when standing or walking is felt.
Treatments:
Without treatment plantar warts take a year or two to disappear.
- Medications like stronger peeling medicine (salicylic acid) and freezing medicine (cryotherapy) can help.
- Surgical procedures include:
- Removing with trichloroacetic acid or bichloracetic acids.
- Immune therapy to stimulate your immune system to fight warts.
- Minor surgery through local anesthesia.
- Through pulsed-dye laser treatment to burn the tiny blood vessels.
- HPV vaccine successfully treats warts.
The best way to go would be to seek medical attention whenever you suspect you have a Plantar Wart rather than waiting for the wart to go off by itself.
