1. Try Wart Removal Home Treatment First
Common warts are more of a cosmetic annoyance than a health risk. Though warts are caused by human papillomavirus (HPV), which has been linked with cervical cancer, there are more than 100 such HPVs. The majority of them cause noncancerous warts, as in the case of common warts. Found primarily on the hands and fingers, common warts are relatively easily treated at home using over-the-counter treatments that contain salicylic acid such as Compound W or Occlusal-HP. Another home treatment that is hands down the least costly of all treatment options, home remedy or otherwise, is removing warts using duct tape. The process involves covering the wart for five or six days with duct tape, soaking the wart, filing it with a pumice or nail file, recovering the wart and repeating the process until the wart is gone. This can take up to two months. The effectiveness of this method is disputed, but it certainly has its devotees.
2. Use Chemical Wart Treatments
There are a host of prescription-strength or physician-administered chemical treatments used to remove warts. Two of the more common ones are cantharidin and imiquimod. These work to form a blister under the wart that then sloughs off or is removed by your doctor as the skin below the wart dies. Oral or topical retinoids may be prescribed by your doctor to disrupt the growth of your wart. Interferon-alfa and bleomycin injections are reserved for removing only the most treatment-resistant warts. However, many of these chemicals are known to pass through breast milk, and the impact to fetuses is not entirely clear. If you are nursing, pregnant or may become pregnant during the course of treatment, you should discuss delaying treatment with your doctor.
3. Request Surgical or Laser Wart Removal
If home and chemical wart removal treatments have failed, or you simply want the wart gone quickly, ask your doctor about surgical or laser wart removal. Both can be done by your local dermatologist during a routine office visit. However, these methods are the most painful of all, even with the use of local anesthetic. In fact, it's often the administration of the anesthetic that hurts the most. Aside from the physical pain, if your health insurance won't cover the cost of wart removal, your wallet will feel the pain, too. Finally, you run the risk of scarring with both surgical and laser wart removal, which you typically don't with the other methods.
