What Are Plantar Warts?

Plantar warts are benign skin lesions on the bottom of the foot. The bottom of the foot is called the plantar surface. Plantar warts are the same as warts found elsewhere on the body but due to the pressure of standing and walking they become impacted up into the skin. Often these go unnoticed. They can become painful if they enlarge or if they are directly under a bone that bears weight like the heel bone (calcaneus) or ball of the foot (the metatarsal heads). The common wart is also known as a verrucae vulgaris and the plantar wart as a verrucae plantaris. Warts are caused by a viral skin infection. Direct contact must be made with the virus. It's postulated that the virus becomes impacted into the skin by weight bearing causing a type on viral inoculation. Warts do not spread through the blood stream; they live only in skin. They do not have roots or seeds. They can be isolated or there may be clusters.

What predisposes us to getting Plantar Warts?
You must come in contact with the virus. Places that are exposed to barefoot people have a greater probability of being infected. Bathrooms, lockers rooms and around swimming pools are likely suspects. If other people using these areas are infected your chance of exposure rises significantly. There also may be an age related factor. Warts are fairly common in children and teens and fairly uncommon in adults. This may be due to older people having a more matured immune system. Teens also have higher exposure in places like schools. Warts are not highly contagious, but exposure should be avoided.

How is a diagnosis made of Plantar Warts?
Clinical appearance is usually significant for diagnosis. This is a fairly common condition and your podiatrist has seen and treated this countless times. The wart itself appears as thickened callus like tissue. The skin lines do not go through the lesion. There is often a distinct border. There are often tiny brown or black dots in the lesion. Pinching the lesion from side to side usually creates pain. There can be single or multiple lesions. There can be large lesions that coalesced together creating large mosaic warts. They are usually not painful with ambulation.

How are Plantar Warts treated?
There are a variety of treatment options available. Over the counter medications are usually not effective. The warts are essentially impacted up into the skin. Typical treatment consists of paring-scraping the lesions and application of topical irritants to blister the warts and lift them out. This usually entails multiple treatments. Another option is to use cryotherapy-freezing destruction of the lesion. Laser destruction is another option as is surgical excision. Placement of a medication beneath the lesion can also be effective. But none of these treatments is effective all the time and multiple treatments are usually needed. Sometimes it helps to visualize the wart as spider like. You can remove or destroy the main body but there can be additional legs of virus extending into the adjacent skin tissues. Current thinking on warts is that around fifty percent resolve spontaneously on there own within one year.

Dr._Thomas_Buividas

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