A child's toenail grows at 1 year 9 months or at any other age. What to do? An ingrown toenail is a tragedy, everyone who has encountered such a difficulty can assure you. How to act if a toenail, most often a large one, has an ingrown nail? How to cure at home with the help of folk remedies, what does medicine offer in this case?
Reasons
A child can grow a nail into the skin for a variety of reasons, here are the most basic of them:
- If you noticed an ingrown toenail on your feet, then it is quite possible that this happened due to improperly selected shoes. Too tight or narrow shoes can lead to such consequences, as they strongly compress the foot and subsequently result in ingrowths. This also applies to newborns, all his socks andbooties should also be loose.
- Lack of or improperly selected baby nail care, for example, improperly trimmed nail plate, especially if too large scissors were used for this. Also, ingrown nails form if the nail was cut unevenly, especially in infants.
- Ingrown nails can be due to a lack of vitamins in the body. This leads to a curvature of the nail plate, and the risk of pathologies increases.
- Any injury to the fingers can also lead to ingrown.
- Ingrown toenails can also occur if the child has flat feet or clubfoot.
If you do everything right and follow the above, then you and your child will never run into a problem. The task of parents is to monitor the appearance of signs of an ingrown toenail in a child.
Medicated treatment
It is important to remember that drug treatment of an ingrown toenail in a child (photo of the drug above) is prescribed exclusively by the attending physician.
In case of ingrown toenail and pain, the child may be prescribed the following medications:
- Balm "Nigtinorm". Used after a softening foot bath. It is applied to the periungual roller for 15-20 minutes. The procedure is carried out twice a day for four weeks.
- Ointment "Uroderm" (analogue - the drug "Foretal"). It is applied twice a day to the affected area, after which the child is put on socks onone hour. In children, in order to avoid complications, the ointment is used for no more than three days.
- Ichthyol ointment. It is applied daily before going to bed on the nail and periungual roller, fixed on top with a cotton pad and a plaster. In the morning, the remains of the drug should be removed.
- Vishnevsky's ointment. It is applied like ichthyol ointment. A similar drug is Levomekol. If an ingrown toenail becomes infected, a doctor may prescribe oral antibiotics.
What to do? Has a child's toenail grown in, but medications do not help? With the ineffectiveness of drug therapy and the risk of complications, the patient is prescribed a procedure for removing the nail and, if necessary, damaged areas. There are the following methods.
Radio wave surgery
High-tech way to remove an ingrown nail using high frequency waves using thermal energy. Part of the nail or its surface is removed by radio waves of a special surgical "scalpel". The procedure is short and requires only local anesthesia. It provides high-quality removal of damaged tissues and ingrown nail part. Complications are rare.
Healing is fast enough.
Laser correction
The duration of the operation, if a child has an ingrown toenail, depends on the volume and complexity. It takes place under local anesthesia. During the procedure, possible infection and the appearance of blood due to cauterizinglaser action. When applying the method, burns of the nail roller are possible. Recovery takes a long time. There are a number of contraindications.
Surgical method
If a child has an ingrown toenail, what should I do? The doctor may recommend a surgical method to solve the problem. Removal occurs with a surgical scalpel followed by suturing. It is rarely used in children due to the high risk of subsequent deformation of the nail. Long recovery period. In the healing process, antibacterial and antiseptic therapy is needed.
Home Treatment
Every parent must know how to behave if a child has an ingrown toenail. To prevent violation of the integrity of the tissue cover, it is necessary to take the necessary measures to eliminate the problem in a timely manner to preserve the integrity of the nail and prevent further spread of the infection.
For this, it is not necessary to contact professional doctors, you can solve this problem at home. There are the following methods to fix the problem of ingrown nails at home:
- On a daily basis, before going to bed, give the child warm baths. They are made in the following way. Edible s alt or soda is dissolved in water, in a proportion of ten grams per liter of water. Additionally, you can pour chamomile broth, potassium permanganate or furatsilin. If your child has a pronounced intolerance to essential oils, then you can add them to softentea tree oil or bergamot is best. Hands or feet are placed in such a bath for a long period of time, at least half an hour. If your child is very restless, you need to think in advance what to do with him at this moment. It is important to monitor the temperature of the water and, as soon as it cools down, immediately add a new portion of warm water.
- In addition to warm baths, you can eliminate the problem of an ingrown nail at home with softening compresses, which are also done at night. It is best to do them immediately after a warm bath, applying to the right place. The best option is to make them from mutton fat or from butter and cow's milk.
- Try to cut off the ingrown part of the nail, this should be done quite carefully.
- If a small wound is revealed as a result of any action, it must be treated with anti-inflammatory and disinfectant drugs, the most effective in this case will be aloe juice, alcohol or iodine.
- The next, no less good way is to take a small piece of cloth or a cotton pad and soak it completely with butter and place it under a slightly raised nail. This procedure also needs to be done on a daily basis. Nails should definitely be trimmed with a nail file once every three days and until the problem of ingrown nails in your child is completely and completely eliminated.
Surgery
If it turned out that the problem of a nail ingrown into the skin has become not alien to you,Surgical intervention will help to get rid of this problem quickly and without severe pain. There are several types of such intervention. Before the start of any operation, injections are given, thanks to which the child will not feel pain in the future. Novocaine or lidocaine is most often used as an anesthetic.
It is important to remember that any of these drugs can cause an allergic reaction or even shock. Therefore, before the medicine is administered, you need to consult a doctor. One of the easiest methods to solve the problem of an ingrown toenail is to get rid of it with the help of a surgeon. It can completely remove the entire nail plate. Further, the nail will be completely restored after three months. During this period, the place from which the plate is removed remains completely defenseless and even the slightest contact with it can cause severe pain, and especially during the first time after the operation.
Most often it happens that the nail immediately begins to grow in, this happens due to the fact that the nail fold becomes very inflamed. Therefore, after the operation, it is necessary to make a plastic roller near the nail.
The removal of the ingrown toenail of the child is done as follows. A small oval incision is made on the side of the finger, a small part of the skin is removed and the resulting wound is sutured. After that, the nail roller turns out and its contact with the nail ends. By doing this, you can be almost completely sure that you will not have to face such a problem in the future.
SAdvances in technology are now beginning to abandon old methods and use new ones. There is a method, after which the formation of any injuries is practically excluded, and this is laser correction. Laser beams are directed to the nail plate and begin to warm it up, causing evaporation of both the plate itself and the growth part near the nail.
Any deviations and infections that have arisen are also removed by laser. In addition, the laser helps to cure the fungus and prevents the formation of a new one. Such a procedure can cause complications only if the nail has been affected by any disease, if the child has diabetes or atherosclerosis. These diseases entail a violation of blood circulation, which reduces regeneration and protection against various infections, which can lead to pathologies in the future.
Prevention
To prevent ingrown nails, be sure to adhere to the following rules:
- Wearing shoes in a child should not cause discomfort. The fingers should be free and everything should fit the size. In shoes, any finger should move freely. In no case should you buy large shoes, in the future this may lead to the formation of flat feet and ingrown nails.
- The child's sock and tights should also not squeeze fingers and be strictly in size. In addition, you need to pay attention to the fabric from which they are sewn, cotton is the most skin-friendly.
- Things need timewash, preferably after each exit to the street.
- One of the main rules is to cut your nails properly. On the legs, the nail must be cut off completely, and the remaining sharp corners should be processed with a nail file. The maximum size that the nail plate can protrude is a millimeter.
Conclusion
To prevent the occurrence of pathologies in a child, it is necessary to receive expert advice in a timely manner. Being engaged in home treatment, you can cause serious complications in the form of inflammation, and then you won’t be able to do without surgical intervention. And if the appeal is timely, then you can deal with the problem quickly and without pain.
