Most likely, parents scared many of us that it’s dangerous to pick up a toad - warts will surely come out. And a part of especially impressionable children by the tenth road went around these amphibians. But not the fact that this helped them subsequently avoid the occurrence of a wart. We will try to consider the causes of the appearance, as well as the treatment, below.
What are warts?
Warts are neoplasms on the skin in the form of papillae or nodules. Most of them have a benign nature, although there are cases of degeneration of warts into malignant tumors. They are usually dense and dry. The structure may be single or may consist of many nodules, have clear boundaries. Sizes: from a pin head to 1-2 cm. Sometimes small warts can merge into islands up to a nickle.
They do not hurt, with the exception of those that are in places of constant pressure or are subjected to other mechanical stress. Warts may form on the body, hands, soles, head, face, genitals. In color, they are mainly gray-yellow, sometimes they are dark brown in color.
What are they like?
There are four main types of warts:
- Ordinary (vulgar) usually appear on the hands. They have an uneven, villous surface, with a keratinized upper layer. Plantar warts also belong to them. More often, sweating people risk them. In places of pressure shoes such growths are very painful.
- Flat warts mainly appear in children and young people, so they are also called youthful. Above the surface of the skin they rise by only 1-2 mm. Their surface is smooth, the color from pink to light brown. Favorite “habitat” - face, hands, legs.
- Genital warts are completely different from previous types of warts . If ordinary and flat warts are dry, then condylomas are fleshy, icicle-like growths on the leg. Growing, they can form growths similar to cauliflower. Genital warts are very dangerous. They most often can grow into malignant.
- In older people, senile warts occur. The reasons for their appearance differ from the previous ones - these are not viral growths. They look like keratinized, greasy plaques of dark color.
Warts need to be distinguished from moles (birthmarks, nevi). The latter can be congenital or acquired. They appear as a result of filling the epidermal cells with pigment and converting them into melanocytes. Their danger is that nevi can become the progenitors of melanoma - one of the most dangerous types of cancer. This can happen because of the simplest things: frequent rubbing, injury or abuse of ultraviolet light.
Why do warts appear?
Naturally, the toads and frogs mentioned above are in no way associated with the appearance of a wart. The causes of these skin defects are infection with the human papillomatosis virus (HPV). This does not apply to senile warts. The wart causing virus has more than 110 varieties. He lives only in the skin and mucous membranes, without infecting the blood and other organs.
How do warts occur? The causes of HPV are concentrated in the lowest layer of the skin. As you know, the cells of the epidermis, as they mature, move upward from the bottom of the skin, where the exfoliation of dead cells occurs. The papillomavirus moves along with them. Reaching the surface, it provokes the formation of contagious warts.
Contagion Factors
HPV can be infected by direct contact with affected areas of the skin and mucous membranes of the virus carrier. And also using his manicure scissors, nail file, other hygiene items.
The virus has two stages: active and inactive. He may be in the latter for years, and a person does not even realize that such a dangerous "roommate" lives inside his skin. When the immune system fails, the virus begins to proliferate and crawls out. If a person has warts, the reasons for this may lie in a decrease in immunity.
Skin lesions are also dangerous in relation to HPV infection. That is, contact with a person with warts does not always lead to illness. Infection occurs with a combination of three factors - this is the active phase of the development of the virus, a decrease in the immunity of the contact person and a violation of his skin.
Virus behavior options
Papillomavirus is quite unpredictable. Sometimes warts disappear without treatment on their own within a few months or years. More often this happens in children. Warts are a rather interesting phenomenon; they may not develop according to the classical pattern. If other ailments without treatment "gain momentum", and with proper treatment, the patient recovers, then with warts it is impossible to say with certainty how they will behave in a particular case.
It happens that a remedy for a wart does not bring relief, and the number of growths not only does not decrease, but also increases. But even if the drugs helped, and you got rid of the warts, then no one guarantees that after a while you will not encounter the same problem again. Statistics claim that relapses occur in a third of those infected with papillomavirus.
Warts: what to do?
Despite the harmfulness of HPV, self-medication is not recommended. In the treasures of traditional medicine you can find literally a thousand and one remedies for warts.
This is the use of herbs, and the burning of growths with acids, and their evaporation, and hemispherical remedies, when you need to anoint the wart with something, and then bury this piece to rot.
As a result of all these actions, warts can go away. But with accuracy to say whether the folk remedy helped, or if the human immune system worked, no one can.
In any case, you need to see a doctor. It is the dermatologist who can determine with one hundred percent guarantee whether the wart has grown into a malignant formation, prescribe effective means to remove the wart, or determine which method is best to get rid of it.
Local treatment
For it, acid solutions are used. The most common product is a viscous substance called paint. It consists of salicylic and lactic acids. Sometimes more aggressive substances are used: trichloroacetic, nitric, carbolic, cantharidic acids.
This treatment method is characterized by duration. Warts should be constantly treated with prescribed drugs for several days in a row. But one of the advantages of local treatment is that as a result of it, scars and scars rarely remain on the skin.
But with the surgical removal of warts, the formation of a scar, albeit insignificant, cannot be avoided. Excision is used when large areas of the skin are affected. The wart is scraped with a special scalpel and the wound is sutured. But at the same time there is a danger of recurrent infection through the blood.
The composition of local treatment, as a rule, include immunomodulatory drugs. Indeed, it is an excellent state of immunity that is the key to a quick recovery and a factor in preventing relapse of the disease.
Burn cold or electric shock
There are methods for removing warts with electric current or cold. The first is called electrocoagulation. Such a procedure is carried out quickly and effectively, under local anesthesia. The patient practically does not feel anything, while with the help of high-frequency electric current the doctor cauterizes the tissues affected by the virus. As a result of the procedure, the pathogen dies, and the wart is destroyed. But small scars may remind her that she was.
The effect of severe cold is detrimental to the virus. The cryodestruction method is based on this. The growths are treated with dry ice or liquid nitrogen. The patient will have to accept that the procedure is painful. And the bubble that appeared as a result of a cold burn will go away from seven to ten days. But instead of a scar where the wart once "sat", there will be only a pinkish speck.
Laser Wart Removal
A new trend in the difficult fight against warts is the use of a laser. This method has positive reviews. Warts are removed almost without a trace and painlessly in 1-2 minutes, under local anesthesia.
Due to the use of the most modern technologies, the exact effect of the laser beam on the required area and depth is achieved, depending on the damage.
The laser “vaporizes” the wart in layers, while the skin around the neoplasm does not suffer. A small depression remains in its place. Two weeks after the laser has removed the wart, the skin becomes healthy.
When exposed to a laser beam, the lower layers of the epidermis do not overheat. This means that the risk of a change in skin pigmentation, burns or scars at the site of intervention is minimized. The epidermis heals quickly due to the fact that the laser gives impetus to the regenerative processes in the skin, and kills bacteria, which prevents inflammation.
Radio wave knife
The latest development in the field of removal of neoplasms not only of warts of all types, but also of papillomas, and moles, and others, is a radio wave knife.
As with the laser beam, only damaged tissue gets under the knife’s blade, and the destructive effect on the underlying cells is minimal.
Therefore, exposure to a radio wave knife practically does not hurt a patient. Radio waves act on the root of the wart, which significantly reduces the risk of its reappearance.
If you have warts, you will have to decide what to do with them. But even if you are not inclined to get rid of them by radical methods, you still need to make sure that they do not carry the danger of degeneration into cancer formation. Not without reason, with almost all methods of removing growths, their tissue is sent for histological examination. As always, the principle works: it is better to prevent a disease than to treat it later.