The Best Way to Get Fast Relief for Ingrown Toenails

We get it.

Most people, if given the choice, would rather try to handle things on their own first, at home, before going to the doctor’s office.

Nobody wants to make an appointment they don’t really need or undergo an expensive procedure that’s not truly necessary.

That’s understandable. In fact, for a lot of things—like mild heel pain or athlete’s foot, for example—that’s actually what we recommend! If home care can resolve your problem, go for it! Ultimately, we want what’s going to be best for our patients. And if you can fix it simply and easily at home, what could be better?

But when it comes to ingrown toenails? Don’t bother. It’s really, really not worth it to try to go it alone. Just pick up the phone and give us a call.

Seriously: this is one condition you don’t want to mess around with. Pain can be severe, infections can be dangerous, and home remedies are sluggish at best, and ineffective at worst. By contrast, professional treatment couldn’t be simpler, faster, or more convenient.

So if you want to save yourself a bunch of time and discomfort—and who wouldn’t?—give us a call today.

Fast, Complete Relief is Just a Phone Call Away

So, in a nutshell, here’s the process:

You give us a call, and we’ll schedule an appointment to get you in as soon as we can. Although it isn’t always possible, same-day appointments are often available. (We understand how painful ingrown toenails can be, so we make it a priority to see you.)

When you get in, we’ll give your toenail a look and assess the damage. Ideally you don’t have an infection yet, or your infection is still fairly minor. (If there’s a severe infection, we may need to treat it for a week or two first with antibiotics before we can move on to the removal procedure.)

Then—at that very same appointment, assuming no severe infection—we’ll perform the ingrown toenail removal procedure. This is simple, pain-free, and over in just a matter of a few minutes. It’s performed under a fast-acting local anesthetic, so you shouldn’t feel anything and won’t have to wait long.

After the toe has been numbed, we carefully and gently remove the ingrown edge. We don’t have to take off the entire toenail—just a little bit of the side.

Finally, we’ll bandage the toe and send you on your way. You can walk out of the office, no problem.

The relief you feel after the ingrown toenail is gone is incredible and just about immediate. And by the time the anesthetic wears off within a couple of hours, your pain should be pretty much gone.

Just like that.

Most patients are back at school or work the next day. There’s almost no downtime for everyday activities, and very little for most athletic activities. The toe should be totally healed basically before you know it.

But that’s not all.

A Permanent Solution—Even for Those with Recurring Ingrown Toenails

See, often ingrown toenails arise due to an individual’s genetic quirks. In other words, there’s a good chance that you, personally, tend to get a lot of ingrown toenails because your nails are simply prone to them. For example, they could be excessively curved.

If this isn’t your first rodeo, so to speak, you can probably guess that you just happen to be one of the unlucky losers of the genetic lottery—at least in this one specific trait! And that means your ingrown toenail will keep coming back.

Unless …

As luck would have it, we have a solution to that problem as well.

In addition to removing that sliver of ingrown toenail, we can also remove the corresponding sliver of nail matrix using a chemical agent. That’s a fancy way of saying your nail can’t grow back along that edge, which means it can’t get ingrown again, either.

And since it’s only the edge of the nail, it should still look pretty natural. You can paint it, wear sandals, the works, and there’s a good chance no one will ever notice the difference.

In fact, we generally encourage all our patients to get this permanent nail matrix removal treatment, even for children or for those experiencing their first ingrown toenail. It’s your call either way, of course, but our thinking is why risk going through the pain even one more time if you don’t have to?

Why You Should Skip the Home Remedies

So maybe you’re not totally convinced yet.

“Sure,” you might think, “Professional care seems great, but Aunt Maisie had an ingrown toenail last June and managed just fine on her own!”

And unfortunately, “Dr. Google” might even back you up. If you try to search for ingrown toenail home remedies, you’ll probably turn up lots of “gems” like:

• Soak your feet in warm water!
• Use Epsom salt / apple cider vinegar / turmeric / hydrogen peroxide / flower oil / antiseptic / [insert random household product here]!
• Prop the nail with a piece of cotton or dental floss!

Well, we have some bad news for you.

“Dr. Google” can be a pretty good resource for helping you research symptoms and treatments, sometimes. But there’s a reason he doesn’t have a license to practice medicine.

When it comes to caring for your ingrown toenails, he’s all over the map—and usually wrong. Remember, Google’s goal is to tell you what you want to hear—not necessarily the truth!

So, what’s the big deal about ingrown toenails? Here are the main reasons not to mess around with home care:

• It takes forever. Home care may require days (or weeks) to work—and that’s if it works at all. The overall success rate is fairly mixed. By contrast, professional care offers pretty much guaranteed relief from a quick and simple procedure, and almost no down time—you’re back to normal activity within a day or two.
• It’s risky. The longer you have an active ingrown toenail, the more opportunity bacteria and other germs will have to get in and cause an infection. And an infected ingrown toenail can have serious consequences—especially if you have diabetes, poor circulation, poor immune system function, or other systemic conditions. Getting your ingrown toenail fixed in one quick appointment is significantly safer.
• It probably won’t last. Even when home care does work, the odds are pretty high that you’ll eventually develop another ingrown toenail in the future. (And another, and another …). Whereas we are able to perform a simple procedure that should prevent ingrown toenails from returning permanently in most cases. (The recurrence rate is less than 2 percent.)

Again, we get why people don’t want the hassle of seeing a doctor if they don’t have to. But in this case, not seeing us for your ingrown toenail is going to be way more hassle in just about every conceivable way—short term, medium term, long term.

So, do you want to be done with your ingrown toenails, for good, as soon as possible? Maybe even today?

Yeah, we thought so.

To schedule your appointment at one of our six locations in either Missouri or Kansas, please give us a call today at (816) 455-1155.