Ingrown Toenails
Ingrown toenails are a painful condition in which the corner or side of a nail digs into the soft surrounding skin, rather than growing straight out away from your skin.
If your ingrown toenail is still mild, you may only notice a little redness and tenderness. However, more aggressive ingrown toenails may produce severe swelling and pain. In severe cases the tissue may get infected, and that can be extremely dangerous—especially if you have diabetes.
What Causes Ingrown Toenails?
Factors that can lead to this common problem include:
- Improper nail trimming. You should clip your nails straight across and leave them slightly longer than the end of the toe. Use toenail clippers on dry toenails.
- Improper footwear. Shoes that are extremely tight, especially in the toe box, can crowd the nails and push them inward.
- Your toenail could become ingrown after stubbing your toe, dropping an object on your foot, or a related toe injury.
- Genetic inheritance. If you were born with nails that are especially curved, you may develop recurring difficulties with ingrown toenails.
Do I Need to See a Podiatrist for Ingrown Toenails?
If your ingrown toenail has become painful and infected, you should contact our office for treatment. You should also contact us immediately if you have diabetes and notice an ingrown toenail, even if there are no noticeable symptoms yet.
Mild ingrown toenails can sometimes be treated at home if you are healthy. However, we generally do not recommend this, as it can often just prolong your suffering. A podiatrist can fix the problem in a single, simple appointment that provides immediate relief.
How Are Ingrown Toenails Treated?
An aggressive treatment is usually the best solution, especially if your toenail is causing a lot of pain or is infected.
During the procedure, we will numb your toe using a local anesthetic, then remove the ingrown nail border. The relief is almost instantaneous; by the time the anesthetic wears off, your symptoms should be significantly improved.
If there is an ongoing infection, we will treat that as well.
If ingrown toenails recur frequently for you, you may prefer to permanently remove the nail border. We do this by cauterizing part of the nail matrix, which prevents that edge of the nail from growing back. This will permanently prevent the ingrown toenail from ever growing back in the vast majority of cases.
After the procedure, we will bandage the toe, and schedule a follow-up appointment to review the healing process at a later date. Most people are able to return to work, school, and other normal activities within 24 hours.
As you can see, there is no reason to keep suffering if you have an ingrown toenail—fast, effective, and even permanent relief is available after a brief visit to our office. To schedule an appointment with Dr. Brandy and the team at the Trinity Foot Center, please call (972) 293-9650 today.
Ingrown toenails. What is an ingrown toenail? Ingrown toenail is when the nail edges start to pierce the skin along your toes. What causes it? Sometimes it’s from people who have tried to trim their toenails and they leave a piece, or they trim it and it’s ragged or in many times it’s hereditary! People’s mom or dad, someone has had ingrown in the past. Very common when the children come in. Their parents will tell us that they’ve had ingrown in the past. How you treat it? Begin to trim your toenails properly, straight across, don’t go in the corners or any of that. If it’s getting to the point where every time you trim them, you are having an issue, you need to seek professional care, a podiatrist. And we will show you how to properly trim them, and sometimes you need to be surgically corrected, where we actually take the nail folds, meaning the edges of the nail on your toes, and remove them and put a treatment there, so that they never become ingrown again. It’s usually a solution for most people, and that way you don’t have to deal with issues of ingrown toenails again. We have people that come in that have the procedure done 20-30 years ago. They’ve never had an issue since then! So, if dealing with ingrown toenails, come see us here at Trinity Foot Center.
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Office Hours
| Monday | 8:00am - 4:30pm |
| Tuesday | 8:00am - 4:30pm |
| Wednesday | 8:00am - 4:30pm |
| Thursday | 8:00am - 5:30pm |
| Friday | 8:00am - Noon |
Contact
p. (972) 293-9650
f. (972) 291-2533
Location
1801 N. Hampton Road
Suite 340
DeSoto, TX 75115
Inside the Inwood National Bank Building on the 3rd Floor
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