Treatment of ingrown toenail
Treatment Ingrown toenail treatment Ingrown toenail treatmentEnlarge image If home remedies haven't helped your ingrown toenail, your health care provider may recommend: Lifting the nail. For a slightly ingrown nail, your health care provider may carefully lift the ingrowing nail edge and place cotton, dental floss or a splint under it. This separates the nail from the overlying skin and helps the nail grow above the skin edge, usually in 2 to 12 weeks. At home, you'll need to soak the toe and replace the material daily. Your health care provider might also prescribe a corticosteroid cream to apply after soaking. Advertisement Mayo Clinic does not endorse companies or products. Advertising revenue supports our not-for-profit mission. Advertising & Sponsorship PolicyOpportunitiesAd Choices Another approach, which minimizes the need for daily replacement, uses cotton coated with a solution that fixes it in place and makes it waterproof (collodion). Taping the nail. With this method, your health care provider pulls the skin away from the ingrown nail with tape. Placing a gutter splint under the nail. With this method, your health care provider numbs the toe and slips a tiny slit tube underneath the embedded nail. This splint stays in place until the nail has grown above the skin edge. This method helps ease the pain of an ingrown nail as well. Partially removing the nail. For a more severe ingrown toenail (inflamed skin, pain and pus), your health care provider may numb the toe and trim or remove the ingrown portion of the nail. It could take 2 to 4 months for your toenail to grow back. Removing the nail and tissue. If you have the problem repeatedly on the same toe, your health care provider may suggest removing a portion of the nail along with the underlying tissue (nail bed). This procedure may prevent that part of the nail from growing back. Your health care provider will numb the toe and use a chemical, a laser or other methods.