Dealing with the consequences of trauma to the toenails

Health & FitnessMedicine

  • Author Craig Payne
  • Published June 4, 2022
  • Word count 561

Damage to a toe nail may be especially unpleasant, particularly when it's an acute occurrence. This kind of trauma can result in an initial acute issue or persistent long term issue with the toe nail thickness and also the shape. The actual acute injury for instance coming from an accident or severely banging the foot is apparent if it takes place. What is not so obvious is the nail changes which happen from injury, however no problems are seen until months later on once the toenail gets thicker and misshaped.

The most typical cause for a disability to a toenail is injury. This injury might originate from a one-off occurrence such as dropping a large rock on the foot or it might appear with the repetitive injury with wearing footwear that happen to be too restricted and the constant strain on the nail from that. It may also originate from losing the toe nail through the foot sliding around in the footwear, for instance in tennis footwear. This specific damage could affect a single or multiple or all of the toe nails. The toe nail plate becomes thicker as a consequence of harm to the toe nail matrix or growing section of the toe nail. As well as getting thicker this nail plate can also be distorted or misshaped. If your toenail plate is simply thicker, this gets identified as onychauxis. When the nail plate is misshaped along with thick, then that gets known as onychogryphosis. If following the toe nail is traumatised and the toenail growing area is just not impaired, the toenail can re-grow a standard thickness, but may have a ridge of thicker section of toenail that grows out as the toe nail grows.

To treat the acute toe nail damage, there's going to have to be some medicine to help with pain alleviation. Any parts of the nail that can be cleaned up and removed without any issues really should be detached. The toenails as well as the vicinity need to be thoroughly cleaned out with an antiseptic. In some cases what is left of the nail is removed with a local anesthetic. It is important that the nail is safe using a wound bandage and when there is an open wound present, safeguards need to be taken to stop any contamination occurring. The management of the onychauxis along with onychogryphosis disorders need a long term strategy and not simply the one-off treatments for the acute trauma. Decent handling of the acute episode will reduce the danger of these types of thicker nail kinds of disorders. The best way to take care of the onychauxis type issues will be to keep the toe nails cut short and taking advantage of a nail file to reduce the thicker nail. This will take plenty of effort, particularly if the toenail is deformed as well. It is usually a great idea to go to the podiatrist to help get the nails cut and lowered down. The podiatrist will typically make use of a high-speed drill to reduce the thicker nail. Unfortunately, when the damage is within the growing portion of the toenail it's going to only thicken up once again meaning that onychauxis can be an recurring issue. When they do end up being very hard to take care of, then permanent surgery with the nail can be an alternative.

Onychauxis is a common consequence of toenail trauma. PodiaPaedia, the podiatric encyclopedia has more information:

https://podiapaedia.org/wiki/dermatology/nail-disorders/onychauxis/

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