Ingrowing toenails: studies of segmental chemical ablation

Recent studies have suggested that segmental ablation is the treatment of choice for patients with ingrowing toenails and that the success rate is 96%. This procedure has been common practice among chiropodists for 20 years, usually using phenol in the United Kingdom, and sodium hydroxide in the United States. However, there has been little critical evaluation of the relative merits of the two chemicals, of the period of chemical application, or of the duration of post-operative pain and healing time. We therefore embarked upon a number of controlled prospective studies to examine these questions. A prospective study of 422 procedures for patients with ingrowing toenails (onychocryptosis) shows that good results are achieved by segmental chemical ablation performed by chiropodists in 91% of cases. The average period of post-operative pain is 3.6 days. Similar results are obtained using either 80% phenol or 10% sodium hydroxide. We believe that segmental chemical ablation by a chiropodist is the treatment of choice for the typical patient with an ingrowing toe nail.