Wart Removal Myths and Misbeliefs

Wart is a common skin disorder caused by a virus called Human papillomavirus. They appear as small projections all over the body. Today, medical science have well developed to explain the pathophysiology of warts and to cure all kind of wart disorders using advanced treatment methods. However, some of us have wrong beliefs and assumptions regarding wart formation and its treatment.

Interestingly many of us believe that the projections in the body occur due to the action of creatures like toads, reptiles, spiders, insects etc. Like the same, there are many misconceptions regarding the treatment of warts. People all around the world do a lot of unscientific processes and procedures to get rid of warts. Some of these procedures are very dangerous and makes the condition worse. Some of the major fallacies regarding the wart removal are:

Wart removal using horsehair

We all know that Human papillomavirus cause warts, and the warts will not disappear until we destroy these viruses. Many people all around the globe believes that a thread tied in the base of the wart can cure the disease. For this procedure, people use different materials like threads, horse hair, women's hair etc to tie the warts. In fact, a wart is nothing but the unusual growth of skin itself and appears as small projections and it consist of nerves and blood vessels same as the other body parts.

Tying the base of a wart using thread or hair will block the blood vessels of the wart that supplies nutrients and oxygen to the tissues. Finally, after few days, the tissues die naturally. However, this miracle does not happen always. The effectiveness of this procedure is very slow and the wart does not cure completely. The base of the wart may still have thousands of Viruses. The presence of a single virus can produce another wart in the same spot.

Dissection/removal of the wart

Dissecting the wart is the worse method of treatment that bears heavy pain and delivers zero result. The removal of wart may be successful if we dissect the wart in its first stage of growth. At the first stage, the wart growth is limited to the superficial skin layers, so cutting the wart from the base may be successful. In later stage, when a wart increases in size, it spreads into the deeper layers of skin and dissection of the wart at this phase is of no use. Cutting big warts may enhance spreading of wart viruses to adjacent tissues. In case of blood vessel damage, huge blood loss and abscess may occur with heavy pain.

Burning the wart

Many people believe that burning wart is the best way to get rid of the disease. They think that the viruses die while burning the wart tissues. However, this is not true, as this procedure cannot guarantee 100% virus destruction. Just one virus left in the spot is enough to produce more warts. Human papillomavirus die only in extreme temperatures. In LASER therapy, medical practitioner burns the warts using high temperature developed with the help of strong beam of lights at sterilized settings. Burning the wart in home environment with unsterile traditional methods may damage the surrounding tissues and the protective layer of skin named stratum corneum, which acts as the first layer of defense against pathogens. The pathogens are able to invade our body through the burned skin walls and may cause severe infections.

Today, a number of effective wart removal methods are available in medical sciences, which prevents the recurrence of warts by destructing the virus completely.