Sometimes you need more than an over the counter medication to remove a wart, especially if it's a cluster of them on the heel of your foot. Watch how this podiatrist removes them all at once with HARDLY any pain to the patient.
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#1 Dr. Leo Krawetz of Healthy Feet Podiatry
The doctor examines the foot and sees that the patient has more than one wart on his heel. There are actually multiple warts, which he calls a mosaic wart. The removal is not something that can be done at home or with over the counter wart reducing topical medicine, it will require a small surgery.
#2 He First Numbs The Area He Will Be Operating On
In order to remove the entire cluster of warts he needs to numb the entire area where he will be cutting so he can removal all of the viral parts from the heel. He uses an injection of lidocaine with epinephrine and goes in deep to get the infected area numb quickly.
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#3 He Then Needs To Remove The Wart
The doctor uses a tissue snipper to cut away the entire area, even portions of the good skin, to make certain that he gets all of the viral particles not seen by the naked eye. The tissue nipper has a flat bottom which cuts parallel to the dermis. It allows me to remain at the dermal-subcuticular level when cutting without penetrating the fat layer.
#4 The Warts Live In The Bottom Layers Of Skin
The wart itself and the viral particles only live in the skin. There are five layers of skin and the wart lives in the bottom layer of skin. The bottom layer is the stratum basale (basal layer, sometimes referred to as stratum germinativum) and the deepest layer of the five epidermis layers. He will cut around the wart down to that layer and also remove some uninfected skin as well as the viral infected tissue.
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#5 He Cuts Deep Into The Tissue And Yanks Out The Wart Cluster
He pulls away the actual wart that was living inside of the bottom layer of skin. The warts are made up of millions of viral particles that have clogged together and formed. This is very painful if not done by a professional and with numbing medication injected in the removal area.
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#6 The Area Will Take Over 4 Weeks To Heal
Because he had to cut so deep, portions of the fat are also cut away, which could leave to scarring, especially on weight-bearing areas of the body, like the foot. He scrapes this all out, which leaves a hole where the wart's had been growing and living. Once the area is cleaned out he will cauterize the incision with lumicain so it doesn't bleed as much. Because the mosaic wart is very vascular in nature, it normally bleeds a lot, so a dressing is placed on the area and will need to be changed often, and an antibiotic topical ointment rubbed into the area.
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