What
Sore down the sides of your toenails, often with a red inflamed area that does or could get filled with pus? This is when the nail grows into your toe. It might be just a nail spike, or the toenail could be curling round and growing into your toe. It’s absolutely horrible and painful. It restricts what style of shoes you can wear, activities such as hiking, running and ballet. Even sleep is difficult with the duvet resting on it. We understand at Walk This Way, ingrowing toenails are a favourite of ours to treat! They really are so easy to fix!

Where
Ingrown nails can happen on any toe although it’s more common on the big toe!

Why
• It’s time to blame your parents- yes, it can run in families! The toenail is too wide and curved for the toe.
• Poorly fitting shoes
• A history of badly cutting your toenails
• Biting, peeling or picking at your toenails
• Deformed toenails
• Damage to the nail bed

If you are feeling nervous about your toenail appointment- you are not alone, many of our patients arrive quite anxious as it’s already painful but don’t worry we have all sorts of techniques to help ease the pain before we even touch the area. You will be walking on air by the time you leave your appointment.

If you are currently suffering with an ingrown toenail and waiting for an appointment with us. Here are a few easy things you can do, to help you on your way to recovery.
a. Wear sandals to take the pressure of the toe – this will help relieve the pain
b. Salt water foot baths – out the kettle on to boil, wait to the water to be tepid, put a hand full of cooking salt into a bowl, add the tepid water and soak your toe for five minutes. Wipe away any discharge that may be present. The foot baths will help to reduce the inflammation and clean the wound.
c. Apply a clean sterile dressing. This will help to reduce the risk of infection.
d. If you notice a deterioration in your toenail i.e. increase in inflammation, pain, discharge or smell these are signs of infection and you will likely need antibiotics.

If you would like a more permanent solution to your ingrown toenail then book an appointment with us where we will assess you and make a plan with you on the best treatment.

Options
Palliative care- this just means a few appointments where we cut your toenail correctly so that it knows which direction it should be growing in. We will also teach you how to cut your toenails correctly to prevent the reoccurrence.

Nail surgery- this will cure your ingrown toenail! Sounds amazing, right? This procedure has been used for over 100 years, we use local anaesthetic- so you won’t feel a thing! We then remove the problem part of the nail. Most of our patients report that they experience “little or no pain” afterwards and they return to work the next day.

Surgery will take up to 20 minutes. The benefits of the nail surgery are to stop pain, no episodes of infection, correction of nail deformity / ingrowing toenail and you will be able to wear the shoes you want and return to normal activities. Yeah!

As with any surgery, there are some possible side effects, 5% chance for nail regrowth, infection, prolonged weeping, reaction to the phenol and bruising.

Guarantee
All procedures do carry a risk of failure and nail surgery is no exception, with the expected regrowth rate widely accepted as being 5%. We guarantee our self-funding patients that we will undertake a second procedure on the same nail(s), when clinically indicated, at no extra charge.

Don’t worry we will go through everything you need to know at your appointment or you can read our full aftercare advice here.

Our aim is to keep your feet healthy and ingrown toenail free so we will be advising you on how to cut your toenails, which style of shoe is best for you to wear and how to look after your toes so that the problem won’t return.