Removing Warts at Home

Video Transcript

"This is Dr. Loretta Ciraldo. Board certified dermatologist and author of "Six Weeks to Sensational Skin." This clip is about how to remove warts at home, and the very first thing I'm going to tell you, I happen to have a wart right on my finger, and a wart's a little bump, and so really maybe you might say, gee, where there's the bump, why don't I take a clean razor and cut it off. But remember that you don't want to do this because warts have a very good blood supply. So, if you try to just cut up that little bump of the wart, you're probably going to run the risk, or you do run the risk of getting uncontrolled bleeding when you go to think about cutting out a wart. So, whatever you do, we don't want you to do that. Instead you can go to your pharmacist and ask for a wart removal liquid. These are typically based on acids and basically it's just acids that are made up in the lab, they typically will have a lot of salicylic acid in them and that liquid will come in a dropper form, or sometimes a pad form, and you're going to simply be sure that if you have one of this salicylic acid products from the drugstore that you're sure to put it only on the area of the wart because the salicylic acid works by eating in to the skin. If it's eating into the skin that represents the wart then that's great, it's going to get rid of the wart for you, but if you happen to have a liquid and you want to try this at home, you're going to put something like Vaseline or another ointment all around the normal appearing skin around the wart, and then put the acid right over it. Good luck. This is Dr. Loretta Ciraldo"