Ingrown Toenail

Hello everyone!

I am Dr. Gaurav Nakra. I am the founder and principal dermatologist at Centre for Skin Clinic, Delhi. So today we are going to talk about ingrown toenail and its permanent treatment. Ingrown toenail is a condition which is fairly common. It is caused by extra curvature of the nail which goes inside the skin and surrounding the nail and causes pain and swelling around the nail. So this is a very painful condition for which people try a lot of treatment at home. They try a lot of home remedies, creams, lotions, painkillers which may temporarily help but will not solve the problem in the long run. We get a lot of patients who have got complete nail removal done many times but still, they get back the same nail over and over again.

So for permanent cure of this condition we need to do a procedure which is known as Partial Nail Avulsion followed by phenol application. This is the procedure which we start by first disinfecting the area, cleaning the nail and then applying a tonic around the nail. We give local anaesthesia at multiple points around the nail to make that area completely numb. Then we remove the partial nail. Partial nail avulsion or removal is different from complete nail removal. Incomplete nail removal, we just remove the nail in entirety. Here we just remove the lateral part of the small part at the side of the nail which is going inside the skin. So after applying the tonic, we are assured that the bleeding would be much less.

We just remove by cutting and using a forecep to pull out the lateral part or the part which goes inside the skin. Then at the base of the nail or the nail bed, we apply the chemical known as phenol. That chemical is going to make that small part at the edge of the nail plate completely dead. So that new nail which comes is slightly less in transfers curvature. It is slightly smaller in size which would adjust well in the original nail bed. So the new nail which comes is not going to push or go inside the side of the skin and that pain and problem associated with the partial extra nail or the transverse over the curvature of the ingrown toenail are permanently cured. So this is how we treat very effectively and with complete assurance the problem of ingrown toenail.

Thank you so much! Keep on watching for further information.