Plantar wart medical therapy

Overview
No treatment in common use is 100% effective. The most comprehensive medical review found that no treatment method was more than 73% effective and using a placebo had a 27% average success rate.

Treatment
The American Family Physician recommends: Podiatrists and dermatologists are considered specialists in the treatment of plantar warts, though most warts are treated by primary care physicians.


 * Keratolytic Chemicals: The treatment of warts by keratolysis involves the peeling away of dead surface skin cells with trichloroacetic acid or salicylic acid.
 * Immunotherapy: Intralesional injection of antigens (mumps, candida or trichophytin antigens USP) is a new wart treatment which may trigger a host immune response to the wart virus, resulting in wart resolution. Distant, non-injected warts may also disappear.
 * Chemotherapy: Topical application of dilute glutaraldehyde (a virucidal chemical, used for cold sterilization of surgical instruments) is an older effective wart treatment. More modern chemotherapy agents, like 5-fluoro-uracil, are also effective topically or injected intralesionally. Retinoids, systemically (eg. isotretinoin) or topically (tretinoin cream) may be effective.


 * As warts are contagious, precautions should be taken to avoid spreading.