Nail Surgery

Ingrowing toenails are painful and pose risk of infection. If the problem is recurrent and nail cutting by a Podiatrist has not managed to resolve the problem, you may need to consider nail surgery.

Nail surgery involves removing a small section of the nail and, crucially, stopping that section growing back. In most cases a few millimetres of nail are taken from the affected side of your nail leaving the central bulk of your nail untouched.

An injection of anaesthetic is given to each side of your toe (two injections in total) to numb the toe. Nothing further is done until we are completely certain that the toe is numb and that you will feel no pain.

Once we’re all happy, we will proceed to remove the problematic section of your nail – this takes less than a minute. Once the nail section has gone we massage a chemical into the bottom of the nail (the nail matrix), which destroys the cells from which that section of the nail grows. This chemical technique is 90% effective at stopping that section of the nail returning.

We will then put a hefty bandage on your toe and send you home with advice on how to care for your toe for the first few days.

Within 2-4 days we will see you back in the clinic to review the nail surgery site and to give you further advice on how to care for your toe at home. You will be given two weeks of dressings to use and are likely to need to purchase further dressings for use after that point.

The first day after nail surgery you will need to take it easy, but after that normal activities can resume. If you are a footballer, runner or carry out activities that place undue stress on your nails you may need to take a break from those activities for longer. The average time for full healing to occur is 6 weeks, meaning that you are likely have a gradually shrinking wound for that time that will require dressing changes every two days.

While nail surgery can sound like a big commitment, it promises life long relief from the pain of ingrowing nails.