With this summer of fantastic sport finally happening we decided to ask the question
“Why do the world’s top tennis stars and football players choose laser to treat their warts and verruca?’
The problem
You can imagine that for those currently playing in Euros 2020 and Wimbledon, the last thing a player needs, is the unwelcome distraction of a verruca pushing up into the ball the foot onto sensitive nerve endings, or a wart on the racket hand. For professional sports people verruca and warts are an occupational hazard causing discomfort, pain and unnecessary distraction. It’s hardly surprising therefore, that there is the odd detour to 23 Harley Street on route to Wembley or Wimbledon.
The reason why athletes are more prone to warts and verruca is down to several factors. Firstly, they tend to have warm moist skin through sweating and exertion. Moist skin is more prone to tiny micro-tears or openings in the skin, such openings allow the virus contained in other people’s dead skin cells to penetrate and get in. Secondly, the use of communal showering seems to add to the risk. A study of athletes that used communal showers found 27% of such athletes had verruca comparted to 1.4 % who did not use communal showers.
The two biggest risk factors for athletes and non-athletes alike of developing a wart or verruca is firstly, having a pre-existing wart or verruca and secondly having close contact (such as sharing a shower or towel) with someone that has a wart or verruca. Footballers and tennis and players tend to occupy tight-knit groups, therefore it’s relatively common to see clusters of players affected through cross-infection.
For such sports people there is one type of laser treatment that stands out head and shoulders above the rest, the Cutera Nd:YAG system at The Barn Clinic 23 Harley Street, London.
Why do the world’s top athletes choose to treat their warts and verruca treated with us?
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Unrivalled success rates:
The reason why athletes choose our treatment is firstly an unrivalled 96% clearance rate, generally from one or sometimes two treatments. The largest ever single study of verruca treatment involved 348 patients all with resistant verruca showed that the system used by The Barn Clinic had a 96% clearance for 1.4 sessions.
The 96% clearance rate is a world away from the success rates of over-the-counter medications and treatments such as Bazooka 26% salicylic acid and freezing treatments. Such treatments typically only clear around 14-15 % achieved after 2-3 months-worth of daily treatment. Furthermore, other professional treatments such as 50% strength salicylic acid or freezing with liquid nitrogen offer no superiority, demonstrated by a large scale randomised controlled involving 240 patients in NHS clinics in England, Scotland and Ireland. The study again found only 14-15% clearance rates at 8 weeks. Other more recent professional treatments such as needling and microwave have again only 15 % clearance and in the case of microwave little to no evidence, especially for warts deeper than 3 mm.
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Laser treatment prevents transmission to teammates, friends and family.
Uniquely to laser, those that have received laser do not pose a significant risk of infecting their team mates. This is because laser treatment has been shown destroy 100% of infectious viral DNA, by contrast other treatments leave 97% of live infectious viral DNA, meaning athletes are still capable of spreading infection to family, backroom staff and teammates.
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Performance on pitch and court is everything
After laser treatment the pain caused by the wart or verruca typically disappears within 2-3 days, meaning players can focus on the job in hand, and not on the discomfort caused by the wart or verruca.
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Fast return to training
Cutera Nd:YAG laser treatment allows for a fast return to sport, this is because the skin is not broken by the laser, the skin remains intact and forms a dry, blister-resistant scab that drops off 6 weeks after treatment. Non-laser treatments such as acids and freezing create soggy blistered skin that is both painful to play on, also open to the risk of infection, and in some cases, even he spread of the verruca.
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No long-term side effects such as scarring.
Nd:YAG laser treatment doesn’t cause scarring and loss of skin pigment associated with other non-laser treatments and some other types of laser treatment.
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For warts around or under the nail there’s only one treatment
Nd:YAG treatment is the only treatment that can safely penetrate the toe and fingernails to reach warts that sometime invade under the nail. Other treatments require the nail to be removed or drilled, prior to treatment.
Laser energy is not absorbed by the nail, meaning it can pass though and target the wart with risk of damage to the nail.
Not all lasers are the same.
There are various types of laser that use differing wavelengths of light, as such, there is variation in clearance rates and depth of penetration. For instance, CO2 lasers have an invisible infrared wavelength of 10,600 nm, meaning they are good for cutting and vaporising, however CO2 lasers have lower clearance rates to Nd:YAG lasers, typically around 50%, additionally CO2 lasers are associated with pain swelling and scarring after treatment.
The Cutera laser systems used by The Barn Clinic utilise an Nd:YAG laser, that emits light at 1064nm, which is the perfect wavelength for targeting the abnormal blood vessels that feed warts and verruca. Another commonly used laser is the Pulsed Dye laser that uses 577-630nm. Both Pulsed Dye and Nd:YAG lasers have excellent safety records but the Nd:YAG exceeds the Pulsed Dye in performance as it can penetrate more deeply if required, meaning deep plantar warts can be reached that otherwise would have been too deep for Pulsed Dye lasers.
At the Barn clinic we use a combination of the two most successful wavelengths 1064nm, and 530-630 nm found in Nd:YAG and Pulsed Dye lasers.
Laser treatment is actually a cost-effective treatment open to everyone, not just for elite sports people.
When compared to costs of multiple failed non-laser treatments, the cost of Cutera Nd:YAG treatment is frequently less expensive, both in terms of money and time.