FACT SHEET
Ingrown Toenails & Surgery
Ingrown Toenails are a very common occurrence in most Podiatry clinics. Even a minor ingrown toenail can quickly flare into something much worse if left untreated, and before you know it you have a severely infected and painful toenail.
Unfortunately, most ingrown toenails are self-inflicted. This may sound strange but it’s true. Poor cutting technique and self-mutilation by trying to dig the junk out of the sides of the nails (toe jam) causes most ingrown toenails.
Tight footwear is also common causes of ingrown toenails, and warmer months seem to produce more ingrown toenails than cooler months, as the skin becomes much softer due to sweat and retained moisture within footwear. This is also the perfect environment for simple infections to occur if there is a break in the skin around the nail.
Regardless of how an ingrown toenail occurred, the treatment is quite simple.
First, your Podiatrist will examine the affected toe and take a detailed medical history. Is this the first time the nail has been infected and ingrown or is it an ongoing problem? The answer to these questions will determine the type of treatment undertaken.
Is the ingrown toenail painful? Sometimes the ingrown nail can look terrible but be relatively pain free. If this is the case, your podiatrist will probably trim away the nail from the nail groove and pack the area with sterile cotton wool and dress with a sterile dressing.
If basic treatment is not successful then a minor surgical procedure is sometimes required and most Podiatrists are very skilled at performing this surgical procedure.
Before commencing nail surgery, a more detailed history is taken to make sure the patient is suitable for the procedure. Local anaesthetic is administered into both sides of the offending toe, and the toe will normally go numb within minutes. The procedure itself is relatively painless.
Once the toe is numb, your Podiatrist will take out a very small part of the nail, (the part that is normally causing the problem), and then applies a mild acid directly to the nail bed which prevents the nail from ever regrowing…’Guaranteed’. The whole procedure is completed in less than 60 minutes. Once the area is dressed, the patient walks out of the clinic pain free and rarely gets pain even when the anaesthetic wears off.
The patient will normally return the following day to change the dressing and again a week later to make sure it is healing correctly.
