Warts that appear on or near the face, armpits, breasts, bottom or genital area need specialist advice, so it is important for the patient to consult their doctor. Plantar warts (verrucas - on the bottom of your feet) can be painful but you can pare them down with an emery board. Always see your GP if you have a new growth on your skin and you’re not sure what it is, especially if it’s growing rapidly. Plantar warts tend to be both the hardest to treat, as they grow inward due to pressure on the feet. Treatment is not usually available on the NHS to treat warts and verrucas unless there are complications or they are very severe.

Do not use Scholl Verruca and Wart Remover in combination with any other method of verucca or wart removal. People who are sensitive to pain, such as young children and the elderly, may have difficulty with the procedure.

The NICE Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS) site is only available to users in the UK, Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories.

Because surgery has a risk of scarring, it's not often used to treat plantar warts unless other treatments have failed. If you use nail files or pumice stones on your wart or verruca, don’t share these or use on other areas of your skin. It creates excessive skin to cover itself up, and over time these layers and layers of dead skin get compacted, which makes them painful and increasingly hard to treat. Place upside down on a flat surface and ‘charge’ the device by pressing down on the safety cap for 1 second. Possible side effects of cryotherapy are pain, blisters and permanent changes in skin color (hypopigmentation or hyperpigmentation), particularly in people with brown or Black skin.There’s no reason why you can’t continue to take part in activities, such as sports or swimming, if you have a wart or verruca. If you want to get rid of warts sooner, and self-care approaches haven't helped, talk with your health care provider.

Cryotherapy is an effective alternative to more invasive treatment options as it is inexpensive, simple, relatively safe, and can be performed quickly in an outpatient setting. For painful and/or unsightly verrucae or ones that are spreading, you can self-treat using ointments and gels from your local pharmacist following the instructions carefully.The trichloroacetic acid-based gel does sting a bit but it’s a fast worker, with visible results in one week. It is important to note that cryosurgery, or cryotherapy, does not cure the underlying HPV infection. Infection can present as increased pain, swelling, thick yellow blister fluid, purulent discharge, and/or redness around the treated area. Cryotherapy is done in a clinic and involves applying liquid nitrogen to the wart, either with a spray or a cotton swab.

In fact, it is the best procedure for warts under the metatarsals since they can’t be injected easily. Scholl Common warts have a raised "cauliflower-like" appearance and usually occur on fingers, the backs of hands, on the knees and on the face. Carbon dioxide cryotherapy involves making a cylinder of frozen carbon dioxide snow or a slush combined with acetone. They may have tiny black dots in the centre – these are blood clots that have formed in tiny blood vessels.

Verrucas are more likely to need treatment because they often make walking painful: the verruca is pressed into the sensitive flesh of your foot when you stand or walk. At home, the active ingredients are more gentle (for example dimethyl ether) so the process is less quick and certain to succeed, but also less painful than your GP’s quick freeze. For a strong treatment it’s surprisingly non-painful, and even when you get a bit on your healthy skin it doesn’t hurt much and is easy to wipe away. There’s none of the stinging discomfort you get with a freeze treatment, so it’s much more suitable for children. It is used to treat warts using a foam applicator pushed onto the skin lesion for 10–40 seconds, depending on its size and site.