I’ve had a wart by the nail on my middle finger for 7/8 years now. It will not go away. It’s both under and around the fingernail - I believe these are called subungal or periungal warts
Things I’ve tried:
Pulling it off - always returns the same
Freezing at Dr. office - done this many times, very painful, never goes away
Beetlejuice - worked decently but the wart came back
Laser - did nothing
OTC medication - softens the wart and allows me to easily peel it off, but comes back the same
I’m interested to hear from those that have had a periungal/subungal wart by their fingernail that was succesfully removed. And how they treated the wart.
My doctor offered two solutions:
remove fingernail and freeze wart away
cut away part of fingernail and freeze wart away
Both will likely result in a deformed nail or nail bed. However, my nail is already deformed and messed up from the wart/treatments.
I had a plantar wart that I used OTC pads on. It would come back after peeling off. So I used the pads even after the wart was removed. It stopped coming back. It took approximately a year of continuous treatment. Might be tough to do on a finger.
It is very difficult to get rid of warts just by wart treatment. In my opinion (not a doctor), warts go away when you finally get a good immune response, which is difficult because the epithelium has no direct blood supply and is supported by diffusion from the underlying tissue. Traditional non-removal treatments include doing things that cause mild skin irritation to cause mile inflammation to improve blood flow. There are now topical drugs which are used to 'improve the immune response". immunology has developed tremendously in the last 40, 20, 10 and 5 years, and I don’t know that stuff. The topical drugs are normally used ??? to treat pre-cancerous skin thickening, not normally HPV because HPV is normally harmless and self limiting ???
Examples are Imiquimod (Aldara, Zyclara) and fluorouracil (Adrucil)
Ask your doctor about treating solar Keratosis, or see a dermatologist.
Warts are caused by heat sensitive viruses. Laugh if you want but this worked for me. Get a magnifying glass. On a sunny day use the magnifying glass to cook your wart until you can’t stand the pain. The longer the better. Wait. It will die.
Topical 5-fluorouracil does not cause mild skin irritation. It makes the skin slough off, and that’s why it’s used for some cancerous skin conditions (not necessarily skin cancers).
Anyway, I came here to say that I was just on that “do doctors and nurses get used to gross things” thread, and stated there that Dr. Sandra Lee, AKA Dr. Pimple Popper, has one procedure that she just can’t stand to do, and that’s remove a finger- or toenail, and sends those patients to her husband, who is also a board-certified dermatologist.
I had recurring warts around a thumbnail until I graduated from college and got a job that had insurance which would pay for the removal of a mole I was always self-conscious about (it was under an ear) and while I was under his care, he froze those warts off and to my surprise, they never came back.
Since you are asking for medical advice I’m moving this to IMHO where threads asking for opinions are. Just remember these are just the opinions of people you don’t know over the internet and it shouldn’t be a substitute for medical advice from your doctor.
I’ve occasionally had plantar warts, and have had good results with liquid nitrogen. The key is repeated freezings over a long period - not a brief time (as would be the case if a doctor did this).
You’ll need to obtain a thermos bottle (the old-fashioned kind, with a double-wall glass interior) and then wrap this thoroughly with some sort of additional insulation (e.g. flexible foam). You must then find a source for liquid nitrogen. I live in a rural area with numerous dairy farms, which (perhaps surprisingly) makes this easy, as liquid nitrogen is essential to artificial insemination of cows. The local guy who has the stuff is happy to sell me a thermos full for $5. If I store the insulated thermos bottle in my freezer, it will hold liquid for about 24 hours.
To apply, attach a Q-tip to a 6-inch stick so you can reach down into the bottle and get the tip wet. Then touch this to the wart until it hurts (but not too much). Repeat many times over at least an hour.
Melbourne 's post makes some key points about stimulating the body’s response.
This explains why a number of folk treatments will sometimes work. One recent one that was tested successfully was using duct tape. Presumably the adhesive stimulates an immune response and it is that response that will sometimes get rid of the wart.
But people and situations and all that are different. There is no magic bullet. You just keep trying stuff. And having a good doctor can help a lot.
But I’ll note that when I went to drill a small pressure-relief hole in the plastic screw-on cap of my thermos bottle, I found that such a hole was already present.
When I was a lad with an indifferent attitude toward personal hygiene (think ten or eleven years old), I had a wart on the bottom of my right great toe for several years. Sometimes I would try to pull it off, to no avail. Then one day, while I was in the bathtub, I felt something strange under my toe. I went to scratch the wart, and it scraped right off under my fingernail, and it’s never come back. The damnedest thing.
My kid had warts on her fingers, went round and round with OTC remedies and one rout of freezing. Nothing worked. Until we tried a home remedy, she would file down the surface of the warts using a dedicated emory board, then paint it with wart removal stuff then wrapped it up in duct tape, left it for days, repeat. a couple weeks later they all disappeared.