When to Seek Medical Care

Call your doctor if simple home therapy fails to resolve the problem. Usually a primary care doctor can adequately treat plantar warts. If treatment under a physician's care fails to work satisfactorily, a referral to a dermatologist (a skin specialist) may be necessary.

Warts will appear over a relatively short period of time in an area where no callus tissue has been noted before. Corns and calluses usually develop very gradually over several years. It is wise to consult a physician when you are unsure whether you have a plantar wart or another condition, such as a corn, callus, mole, or skin lesion.

Most such growths are harmless, but some can become cancerous. It is also possible for a variety of more serious lesions to appear on the foot, including malignant lesions such as carcinomas and melanomas. Although rare, these conditions can sometimes be misidentified as a wart.

• Seek medical attention for these conditions:
  
  
  • You or your child have warts and want them removed.
    
    
  • Severe pain, redness, swelling, bleeding, or large lesions develop.
    
    
  • After removal by a physician by various methods, including freezing or burning, signs of infection appear at the treatment site. If the area becomes red, hot, painful, and tender after treatment, an infection may have set in.
    
    
  • After treatment, fever develops.
    
    
  • Warts don't disappear completely after treatment.
    
    
  • Other warts appear after treatment.

Plantar warts are rarely an emergency; however, the complications of aggressive therapy can be. Bleeding, severe pain, inability to walk, redness, swelling, streaking, and boil or abscess formation can all indicate an emergency.