Ingrown toenails are a common foot condition and frequent causes include injuring your toenail, wearing shoes that are not loose enough in the toe area or trimming your toenails incorrectly by making them too rounded or short. Fortunately, you can treat most ingrown toenails yourself at home, but serious cases may require intervention from a trained health care professional.
Features of Ingrown Toenails
An ingrown toenail occurs when your nail enters surrounding skin as it grows. The condition affects big toes most often, and it can cause varying amounts of discomfort, redness, swelling, tenderness and pain around the sides of the affected toenail or underneath it. Sometimes ingrown toenails can become severe enough to cause tissue surrounding the nail to become infected, as well.
Home Removal
Removing a slightly ingrown toenail from surrounding skin is possible at home with basic tools such as water and cotton, dental floss or gauze. Begin the process by soaking the foot in warm water for approximately 15 minutes about 3 times per day. After you dry your foot following the soak, take a small section of the cotton, dental floss or gauze and place it carefully under the edge of the toenail that is growing into skin. Replace the cotton, floss or gauze with a new section after each soak. If the treatment succeeds, your ingrown nail will eventually grow out above the surrounding skin instead of continuing to grow further into it.
Medical Removal
An ingrown toenail may remain, get worse or become infected, with or without home treatment. In each case, you should consult a qualified health care practitioner because they can use several methods to safely remove the nail from your skin. If the ingrown nail is mild and not infected, the health professional may place cotton under the toenail's edge, similar to the home method. Trained caregivers can also remove infected, recurring or severely ingrown toenails with a laser, chemicals, electrical current, scissors or other instruments and tools. Options typically include cutting out the ingrown section only, in which case the nail will grow back, or removing a portion of the toenail along with the tissue underneath, which prevents regrowth.
Preventing Ingrown Toenails
Successful removal does not guarantee an ingrown toenail will never return. You can discourage future ingrown toenails, or attempt to prevent them in the first place, by following good nail hygiene. This includes keeping your feet dry and as free of sweat as possible, cleaning your toenails regularly and cutting your toenails properly, which means straight across and not too short. In addition, wear comfortable shoes that fit correctly, do not pick your toenails and always use a clean and sharp trimmer to cut them.
Warning
Although many people can remove mild, uninfected ingrown toenails alone, certain people should never try to do so under any circumstances. Individuals who should always see a medical professional for an ingrown toenail include people with diabetes, nerve damage in their foot or leg, a condition that affects their immune system or problems with poor circulation or numbness in their foot.
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