What is the Best Way to Get Rid of Plantar Warts?
If you or a loved one has plantar warts, there is no better time to start thinking about getting rid of them than right now!
While warts are often harmless, it can take a very long time for them to disappear on their own – up to a year or even longer in many cases. The longer they remain, the more opportunities they have to spread across your feet – or to other people. Warts can even be painful, if they’re located in specific spots that lead to irritation under pressure.
There are several options for treating plantar warts, and you may already be familiar with methods that feature cutting, freezing, or burning to attack the visible signs of the infection.
But now there is a much more comfortable way to get rid of plantar warts, and we’re proud to provide it to our patients. It’s called Swift, and it changes a lot about how warts are treated.
What Makes Plantar Warts Hard to Treat in the First Place?
As we noted, plantar warts are caused by a virus – strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), to be precise. This virus makes its way into the skin and establishes itself among the upper layers.
This position gives the virus a good amount of protection from outside elements, but is also close enough to the surface of the skin that our immune systems do not tend to notice the virus is even there.
This is why original forms of plantar wart treatment have focused on attacking the wart by peeling away the warts from the outside – it’s often been the most effective way to get at the virus. Unfortunately, those traditional ways have also often been painful and a real hassle as well.
But Swift changes this.
What Makes Swift Different?
Swift therapy turns wart treatment inside out by focusing on stimulating the body’s natural immune response and actually having it attack the virus!
We previously mentioned that our immune system tends not to notice when a plantar wart-causing virus invades. However, the immune system will still respond to other disruptions in the area, much like a security guard responding to a tripped alarm in their building.
Swift causes a disruption by sending focused microwave energy into the area. This generates a small amount of heat and friction within the skin, which causes cells to respond with protein signals that our immune system picks up on. It arrives at the scene, recognizes the virus as a foreign invader, and attacks it as it should.
To be fair, traditional wart treatment methods such as cutting, freezing, and chemical-based peeling also tend to elicit a response from the immune system. It’s pretty much conducting an outside attack, after all! In those cases, however, the response comes with a much more painful and damaging cost to the skin.
Swift is able to alert the immune system without significant discomfort or collateral damage to healthy skin cells, and it’s quickly become the preferred choice by our patients!
What Swift Treatment is Like
A full course of Swift treatment typically requires 3-4 short sessions at our office, scheduled out over about 1 month.
During each session, we will first lightly debride the warts for maximum application of the treatment. This will never break the skin or cause any damage.
We then use the application wand of our Swift device to apply microwave energy to each wart for about 3 seconds. You may likely feel a “pinch” during this time, much like that of an injection needle. However, as soon as those seconds are up and the energy is removed, the discomfort vanishes.
After each session is complete, you are completely free to continue your day as normal. There are no bandages to wear, no medications to take, and no having to limp around for the rest of the day on tender feet!
And after Swift treatment has run its course, you also won’t have to worry about scarring or any other risks of lasting effects to your skin. In fact, since your immune system played a starring role in killing the virus, that means it’s more likely to recognize and fight off future attempts at infection as well.
Ditch Your Reluctance to Take Care of Plantar Warts
We know that plantar wart treatment traditionally hasn’t been a very pleasant experience for most people, but Swift therapy truly takes the process in a new and much more comfortable direction. We even highly recommend it for children over the traditional methods you might have experienced yourself growing up.
The sooner you take action against plantar warts, the sooner they can be gone for good! Call Family Foot Care & Surgery at (203) 876-7736 to schedule an appointment at our offices in Milford or Hamden. If you prefer to reach us electronically instead, simply fill out our online contact form and a member of our staff will respond to you during office hours.