Male Speaker: Sometimes you see discoloration of the nail to yellow, greenish something like that and the doctor thinks there is a fungal infection to the nail. How would you approach that if you saw someone in your practice?
Male Speaker: The fungal nail is somewhat of a very difficult problem to treat simply because it's been neglected for a long time. People usually come when they tried everything else for a year or two and then the nail has become so dystrophic or deformed. The fungus is gotten the way down to the nail root and that just makes it great difficult. However, if people pay attention to their feet and their hygiene, if we catch the problem early enough and we think it is a fungus because it has the particular characteristics like the odor, the scaling, the smell, the nails are brittle and discolored, then we first usually treat it with something simple like topical lotion or topical medication.
If however we find out we have a dilemma that it maybe caused by something else, such as a sudatory or even psoriasis which resembles that fungus nail, we may do some laboratory testing to evaluate them. But if the laboratory results comes back as being a fungus and it's really far gone, we may need to use the oral medication. Certain podiatrists actually have found an easier way, right now. We actually remove the whole toe nail with local anesthesia, we have the new toe nail come back and that's about 80% successful. There is also a new modality which is called the laser which is very promising at this point, but it's still early on and we don't have all the answers here.
Male Speaker: Sounds great. There is good chance you can do a lot of little things and maybe even save the nail today.
Male Speaker: Absolutely. Taking care of it in time is the key.
Male Speaker: The trick is like anything else don't wait, take care of all your problems.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services