Freeze a Wart With Liquid Nitrogen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJn9KUHS4WE Liquid nitrogen is a simple, effective treatment for removing warts and moles commonly used by dermatologists.

If you've already had warts treated in this way and feel comfortable with the procedure, you may consider doing it yourself.

This article describes the procedure and how it works. ''Provided for informational purposes only.

Not a substitute for qualified medical diagnosis or treatment.''

How It Works

 * 1) Warts are fed by blood vessels. If you can damage and kill these blood vessels by freezing them, the wart will die. Eventually it will fall off. Liquid nitrogen is cold enough to bring about this localized freezing. We want to restrict the tissue damage to the smallest possible area.
 * 2) A blister will develop a few hours after freezing the wart. The wart will be raised slightly, redden, and you may feel a slight burning sensation.
 * 3) Do not break the blister. if the blister breaks, tissue underneath is likely to be re-infected so that the wart grows back.
 * 4) If you freeze the wart just the right amount, a small but visible blister will form. After some number of days, you will notice a reddish tint inside. Slowly the fluid of the blister will be re-absorbed. The blister will change to a darker color. As it dries out the skin will seem a bit thicker.
 * 5) Resist the temptation to pull off the dead skin. if you do, the wart is more likely to grow back. Even if you always pick your scabs and squeeze your pimples, you can and need to learn to wait in order to be free of your warts. When the dead skin and dried up wart core sloughs off on its own, you will have closed healthy skin below.
 * 6) An advantage of this technique is that when done properly, the outer layer of skin is never broken, greatly reducing the infection risk compared to other techniques.

Procuring the liquid nitrogen

 * 1) This is easier than it sounds. Look in the phone book for suppliers of welding gases. Call them and ask if they can supply you with a small amount. If they ask for the reason, just say it is for a science experiment, which is truthful.
 * 2) Their next questions will be how much you need, and whether you have a dewar flask to transport it. The answers are "one litre" and "yes." A common vaccuum flask (i.e. Thermos) will serve as your dewar flask and is a perfectly acceptable storage vessel for liquid nitrogen. Any quart-capacity vacuum-type glass or metal thermos will do.
 * 3) You may as well use the cheapest one you can find, because sometimes the liquid nitrogen leaves a stinky residue behind.
 * 4) When you go to the gas supplier, be sure to act nonchalant. It will be easy because they will also be very casual. It is no big deal to them, because compared to the other gases they handle, liquid nitrogen isn't much danger. You can expect to pay less than $10. Many places will give it to you for free.
 * 5) There are two important precautions you need to remember to transport your liquid nitrogen safely home:

a). Close the thermos using only a giant wad of paper towels. If you want to use a screw-on cap to hold the paper towels in place, be sure you screw it on loosely. You must allow the vaporizing gases to escape or your thermos will become a bomb. Or you can drill a hole in the screw-on cap as a venting hole.

b.) Keep the thermos upright.

If you follow these steps, you and your liquid nitrogen will make it safely home. You can keep it just like that for a couple days if necessary. Obviously, if your friends have warts they want to get rid of, they can take advantage of your supply.

Preparations

 * 1) Probably you want to observe basic hygiene, even though you are not planning to break the skin. Wash thoroughly.
 * 2) Before beginning, spend plenty of time looking at the wart. Pinch in the skin from the sides and below, so you can get an idea exactly how deep the core goes and how big around it is -- not the dead shell on top, but the living core inside. Pinch it and feel exactly how big it is underneath. If it's on the bottom of your foot, it may just appear as a small bump, but the core goes in much deeper. This first step is important, because you need to know how much tissue to freeze. Use a disposable razor blade to shave off the calloused skin.
 * 3) To apply the liquid nitrogen, use a regular cotton bud (i.E. Q-tip). You may like to tie or wire it on a longer stick for dipping into the thermos.
 * 4) You can also twist the tip of the q-tip to make it a little pointier. As you get more experienced, you may want to tie some extra cotton wool around the base of the cotton bud to hold extra liquid nitrogen, which will save you from having to revisit the thermos so often.

Applying the liquid nitrogen

 * 1) Pour a small amount of the liquid nitrogen into a polystyrene cup. Don't dip the q-tip directly in the thermos, because you may contaminate it with viruses which can survive deep freezing and may spread more warts, especially if more than one person shares the flask. Let's assume it's a small wart. Apply the q-tip right in the middle of the wart. Start with a light pressure. Apply the q-tip several times, until you start to see a frozen zone--it will be white in color. What's tricky is that while it may be frozen white on the surface, you need to think about how deeply it is frozen. So keep applying the liquid nitrogen, doing it in such a way to keep the frozen zone from spreading into the healthy skin around the wart. As you freeze into the core of the wart, you'll be using a bit more pressure. You'll notice that the tissue has hardened, and if you pinch from the sides you will feel that there is frozen tissue between your fingers.
 * 2) After the wart seems frozen enough, give it rest. The color will slowly return. If you think it may not have been frozen deeply enough, you can repeat the process. There will be some minor spikes of cold pain. In general, the cold deadens the nerves, so it isn't bad. Obviously any major pain is a sign you're doing too much.
 * 3) Put a bandage (i.e. Band-aid ACTIV-FLEX™ Bandages, sticking plaster if you're British) over the wart to protect it if you like.
 * 4) If the wart is bigger, you may try just freezing half of it the first time, and then do the rest in a few weeks' time. You want to keep the damage small enough so that your body can heal it safely, without infection, even if the blister breaks, opening the skin. Obviously if the wart is very big you may want to do it in more stages. Or just go to a doctor.
 * 5) If you have several warts, you can do them all at once. You may need to repeat the procedure later for any warts that come back, but now you will be experienced. It is easy and cheap.

Warnings

 * This procedure may involve minor pain or discomfort. You may prefer to request the services of a dermatologist.


 * Liquid nitrogen can be dangerous. Laboratories using it for research require users to wear special cryo-gloves, goggles, gowns and shoes, and to follow special handling procedures. Such measures are not usually seen when visiting a doctor for cryogenic wart removal. The chief risks to the home experimenter are spills onto clothing and into shoes due to the wicking action of clothing that holds the liquid nitrogen in contact with skin. Splashes into the eyes are a concern because liquid nitrogen can spatter when it spills. Goggles (not safety glasses) are usually recommended. Spills onto bare skin are less of a risk. Due to the Leidenfrost effect, it is possible to briefly plunge one's hand into liquid nitrogen without injury.


 * The procedure works best for smaller warts, about the size of a pea (4mm) and smaller. In principle, larger warts may be handled by freezing one pea-sized piece at the edge of the wart, then waiting for the skin to heal completely (about two weeks) before attempting a second freezing. Under no circumstances should you freeze wider areas, as this will result in a large, painful blister, with a real risk of infection.


 * This procedure is suitable for common warts or moles with a clearly defined boundary. There are other kinds of lumps that can be tumors of varying degrees of malignancy. You should be sure that your warts or moles are the harmless, slow-growing and non-invasive ones. You should consult a doctor if your wart or mole is large, grows quickly, changes color, looks inflamed or swollen, or is painful to the touch.

An Example of Excessive Freezing

 * Don't do this! Be careful to only freeze the very center core of the wart. In this picture, you can see that the doctor froze a much wider area than necessary. The wart itself is small. You can see it in the upper left part of the bloated purple blister.


 * To re-iterate, the procedure is intended to target the blood supply to the core of the wart, which is in the very center. When skillfully done, the blister will not extend beyond the boundary of the wart.

Related Tips and Steps

 * How to Get Rid of Planters Warts
 * How to Get Rid of a Wart
 * How to Remove a Wart