Laser Treatment For Toenail Fungus

Onychomycosis or a fungal infection of the toenails is a common problem that can cause those who have it some embarrassment. The infection is not painful, but is unattractive and those with it will almost always keep the toenails covered. The main predisposing factor for this infection is the dark and moist environment inside the footwear. They thrive in that environment. The standard treatment for this is the use of topical or oral medications to destroy the fungal agents. As the nail is hard and has no blood supply in the nail, it is difficult to get any medication to the infecting fungal agent in any great volumes. This makes the treatment of onychomycosis difficult and it can take 6 to 12 months to get a satisfactory result. To complicate the treatment even more is the very high recurrence rate due to the foot being placed back into the dark and moist environment of the footwear that is the major predisposing factor. As the treatment can take so long, it is inconvenient which has led to the search foo simpler treatments.

One treatment that is starting to show promise is laser treatment for toenail fungus. This uses a one off treatment, which is expensive; to destroy the fungus that is causing the onychomycosis. All that needs to happen after that treatment is to wait until the nail grows out and it is claimed that it should be clear. There are no independent clinical outcome trials on this treatment or trials comparing it success rate to the current standard topical or oral agents. Despite this a lot of claims are made for how successful the laser treatment is. The main device for this treatment has been approved by the FDA as safe, but no insurance companies yet cover it as it is still considered experimental until some good outcome studies are done. The treatment method will also suffer from the problems of the current treatments, in that the foot is still being placed back into the hostile environment of the footwear which partially caused the problem in the first place. The use of a laser is not going to protect the nail from the problem happening again.