The urge to fix an ingrown toenail is almost too strong to resist when you’re in pain. Once the corner of the nail digs into your skin, you’re probably convinced that if you could just get to it with a pair of clippers or tweezers, the problem would go away. It usually won’t, and bathroom surgery on an ingrown nail makes things worse.
At Ankle & Foot Centers of Georgia, with two locations in Marietta, Georgia, Ryan Goldfine, DPM, treats ingrown toenails that patients have tried to fix at home and ingrown toenails that need professional removal before they become infected. Let’s unpack why home treatment fails and what proper care looks like.
An ingrown toenail happens when the edge of your nail grows into the skin instead of over it. The nail penetrates the soft tissue, creating a wound that your body treats like a foreign object. Your toe swells, turns red, and becomes painful to touch or put weight on.
Several factors contribute to ingrown nails:
Your big toe takes the most abuse and develops ingrown nails more often than the others, but any toe can be affected.
The most common home remedy involves trying to lift or cut out the embedded nail edge. People use nail clippers, tweezers, dental floss, or even needles to get under the nail and remove the offending piece.
The problem is that you can’t see what you’re doing or sterilize the area properly — you’re working on inflamed tissue. Cutting into an ingrown nail at home typically causes:
Even if you successfully remove a piece of nail, the relief is temporary. The nail keeps growing, and without addressing why it became ingrown in the first place, the problem returns within weeks.
An ingrown nail creates an open wound. Your skin has been pierced, and bacteria from your shoes, socks, and the environment have direct access to the tissue underneath. Once infection sets in, your toe becomes hot, painful, and starts draining pus.
Signs of an infected ingrown toenail include:
Infected ingrown nails need immediate professional treatment to prevent the infection from worsening.
Dr. Goldfine can remove an ingrown toenail in the office under local anesthesia.
After numbing the toe, Dr. Goldfine cuts away the ingrown portion of the nail, removes any embedded fragments from the skin, and cleans the wound. For nails that repeatedly become ingrown, a permanent solution involves treating the nail matrix so that the problematic edge doesn’t grow back.
The procedure is called a partial nail avulsion with matrixectomy. Dr. Goldfine removes the troublesome section of nail and applies a chemical to the exposed matrix tissue to prevent regrowth in that area. Your nail still grows normally, but the edge that kept curving into your skin is permanently gone.
Once an ingrown nail has been treated, a few habits help keep it from happening again, such as:
If you’ve had multiple ingrown nails on the same toe despite changing how you trim and what you wear, talk to Dr. Goldfine about permanent correction.
An ingrown toenail isn’t something you should try to fix in your bathroom. Call Ankle & Foot Centers of Georgia or request an appointment online today for safe, effective ingrown toenail treatment.
