Are your toenails beginning to look yellow, thick, and furrowed? Chances are, you are dealing with a fungal infection of the nails. While there are many home remedies people may recommend for such an infection, such as soaking your feet in vinegar or applying essential oils to the nails, your best bet is to see a foot doctor for diagnosis and treatment. Here's what you can expect when you make that appointment.
Diagnostic Testing
Before your foot doctor can diagnose you with a fungal infection, they need to do two things: eliminate the possibility of other causes and confirm the presence of infectious fungi. They will particularly want to rule out psoriasis, which is a skin condition that can sometimes affect the nails. They can usually do this just by asking about other symptoms. Do you ever have scaly, flaky, red patches on your skin, especially around your scalp or between your legs? If not, chances are you don't have psoriasis.
Your doctor will also take a scraping of your nails, and perhaps also the skin around your nails, and send it off to a lab. The lab will test the scraping for the presence of infectious fungi. It should only take your doctor a couple of days, at most, to get the results back.
Treatment Options
If the lab confirms you have a fungal infection of the toenail, your doctor will recommend one of the following treatments: oral antifungal drugs, topical antifungal creams, or antifungal nail polish.
Most patients try a topical antifungal cream first. This comes with a lower risk of side effects than oral medication. You will generally need to soak your nails in warm water to soften them up, and then apply the cream. If this is too much work, you may want to try the medicated nail polish instead. You apply it daily and then remove the layers at the end of the week.
If topical treatments are not effective, your doctor will likely prescribe oral antifungal medications. Typically, you will take such a medication for several months. You should start to see the new nail emerging free of infection. The infected nail, however, will never go back to normal. It will eventually grow out enough that you will have trimmed it all away. Oral antifungals can have side effects like liver damage and headaches, so your doctor will want to monitor you closely and perhaps run some blood tests while you are taking these drugs.
Don't ignore a toenail infection just because you've heard they are hard to treat. They can be tough to treat alone, but with the help of a foot doctor, you can and will succeed.
For more information, reach out to a local foot doctor.
Share18 June 2020
If you have chronic foot pain like I do, you probably use a lot of creams and medications to get rid of it. But if you're like me, the home treatments don't work for very long. My regular doctor suggested that I see a podiatrist for care. I didn't do it right away because I thought I could handle the pain with my home treatments. But after experiencing a serious foot infection last month, I decided to take my doctor's advice. I'm so happy I did. My podiatrist prescribed foot therapy for me, which relieves the stress and tenderness in my feet. I also wear special cushions in my shoes now. The cushions keep my feet from swelling up when I walk. If you need help, read my blog. My blog offers sound advice and information about podiatrists and their treatments. Good luck and please stay pain free.