If you have noticed symptoms of nail fungus and are aware of the dangers of leaving it untreated, you may be panicking about how to move forward. Well, your worries are over because here is the perfect roadmap to dealing with your toenail fungus.
- Visit your doctor: The first thing to do is to confirm that what you are experiencing is actually nail fungus. You must visit a qualified medical professional who can provide you with a diagnosis. The best provider would be one who has experience treating nail fungus being the best choice.
- Evaluate treatment options: Once you have received your diagnosis of nail fungus, you should discuss and contemplate the treatment options you have. Topical treatments have few side effects but are less than 10% effective. While oral pills are much more effective but can cause severe and sometimes fatal damage to your liver. The safest option is laser treatment, especially with the PinPointe laser. This laser has the highest cure rate and no side effects.
- Receive treatment: If you treat your nail fungus with the PinPointe laser, you will only need to come in for one session since the laser kills all the fungus with one treatment. On the day of your appointment, you should come in with trimmed nails and no nail polish. We also ask patients to bring a pair of clean socks to wear home after the treatment. This is so you are not reinfecting your newly-treated nails from your old socks. There is no downtime after the treatment, so you can resume your normal activities and even drive yourself home.
- Prevent reinfection: Nail fungus is very infectious, and if you came into contact with it once, you may be at risk of coming into contact with it again. Therefore, you have to take steps to prevent reinfection with nail fungus. This means throwing out your old nail polish and nail tools. Washing your shoes, socks, linens, and towels, and never being barefoot in public places. You should also take care to maintain good hygiene, such as washing and properly drying your feet before bed, and always wear clean socks and shoes.
If you have nail fungus, the most important step is to get the right treatment. Contact us today to schedule a free consultation with one of our doctors at one of our over 150 locations.
