For three and a half years I had been troubled by several finger tip warts which made piano playing ,typing and adjusting hearing aids difficult .Tape would never stay on my fingers ,often in water ,for long; so I then tried, with no success, repeated freezing using a kit from the local pharmacy , salicylic acid cream, and covering the warts with nail varnish .My GP no longer has a cryo-therapy machine and the GPSI I was referred to, simply suggested continuing the nail varnish .I also tried corn plasters which contain a higher concentration of salicylic acid -to no avail .I spent a great deal of money and time .
Latterly, I combined daily applications of standard wart cream, kept in place with micropore tape , with weekly freezing after removing all the keratin with callous knife and nail scissors ( removal with a pumice ,though safer, is not nearly so efficient).What finally seemed to make a difference was freezing the warts for much longer than the stated time (to the limits of tolerance ) and using a double freeze thaw cycle .Of course my warts may have got better by some other mechanism, but I thought that readers might be interested.
Not all patients could safely remove keratin as described; a Dermatology assistant kindly did this for me once, after a minor op for different pathology .I also remember a GP removing keratin from plantar warts when I was a teenager .
Rapid Response:
Re: Treatments for common and plantar warts
For three and a half years I had been troubled by several finger tip warts which made piano playing ,typing and adjusting hearing aids difficult .Tape would never stay on my fingers ,often in water ,for long; so I then tried, with no success, repeated freezing using a kit from the local pharmacy , salicylic acid cream, and covering the warts with nail varnish .My GP no longer has a cryo-therapy machine and the GPSI I was referred to, simply suggested continuing the nail varnish .I also tried corn plasters which contain a higher concentration of salicylic acid -to no avail .I spent a great deal of money and time .
Latterly, I combined daily applications of standard wart cream, kept in place with micropore tape , with weekly freezing after removing all the keratin with callous knife and nail scissors ( removal with a pumice ,though safer, is not nearly so efficient).What finally seemed to make a difference was freezing the warts for much longer than the stated time (to the limits of tolerance ) and using a double freeze thaw cycle .Of course my warts may have got better by some other mechanism, but I thought that readers might be interested.
Not all patients could safely remove keratin as described; a Dermatology assistant kindly did this for me once, after a minor op for different pathology .I also remember a GP removing keratin from plantar warts when I was a teenager .
Competing interests: No competing interests