Wart Removal
Village Pediatric Group in Tuckahoe, New York, offers wart removal services to pediatric patients.
A wart is a benign (noncancerous) skin growth. Warts are a common problem that develop if your child gets infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV). Warts usually aren't painful, and in most cases, they disappear without treatment.
However, this can take a long time — years in some cases. Warts can also spread from one part of your child's body to another, and from your child to other children. In addition, warts are unsightly and can make children feel very self-conscious.
Common warts are typically brown or grayish yellow with a rough surface. They tend to grow on the backs of the hands and around the nails. Flat warts are smooth, growing in groups of small growths that can number up to 100. These warts are most likely to develop on your child's face.
Plantar warts grow on the soles of your child's feet, while palmar warts grow on the palms of their hands. These warts have black dots on them, which are the remains of the blood vessels that the warts feed from. Mosaic warts are clusters of plantar warts, which can be painful because of the pressure put on the warts when your child walks.
Filiform warts are long and narrow, unlike the roughly circular shapes of most warts. They're most likely to develop on your child's face or neck and often affect the eyelids.
The most conservative approach is to treat the wart with a salicylic acid patch, liquid, or gel. This method is often effective but can take three months of daily treatment.
Village Pediatric Group provides faster wart removal treatments. One is cryotherapy, which involves freezing the wart using liquid nitrogen. Another is electrodesiccation (or cautery) and curettage. Your provider will anesthetize your child's skin and dry the wart using an electric needle.
The next stage is scraping the wart away with a special instrument called a curette. This treatment has similar results to surgical wart removal, in which your provider cuts the wart out of your child's skin. However, it causes less tissue damage and pain. Both methods may cause scarring.
Another option for wart removal is laser therapy. A pulsed-dye laser destroys the blood vessels serving your child's warts, depriving the wart of its blood supply. The wart dies and falls off. Laser energy can also kill the HPV that caused the wart.
Wart Treatment for Kids in Tuckahoe, NY
To find out more about wart removal for your child, call (914) 771-7070 to schedule an appointment or use our online booking tool.
