How to Treat Painful, Irritating Corns

“Hi, I’m Dr. Mitchell Wachtel. Today we’re going to talk about corns and what they are.Corns are thickened developments of skin that typically occur on the tops of our toes. Many times they’re caused by irritation. It’s our bodies way of protecting ourselves. So if the area is getting a lot of friction on the top of the toe, typically a corn will develop. They can get very thick and they can develop sores underneath. Basically it’s like having a pebble on top of your skin that keeps getting rubbed and irritated. The area becomes inflamed and over time you could develop an ulcer. An ulcer is a development in the breakdown of the skin on top of the toe. Corns can occur anywhere on the foot. On the bottom of the foot we call them calluses but on the top of the foot we call them corns.

The best treatment for corns are shaving the lesion/cutting it down, many times we can put a pad directly over the toe to protect the foot, or checking your shoewear, getting evaluated by a foot specialist where we can evaluate your footwear to determine if your footwear fit your feet correctly and that’s it’s the correct kind.

Lastly, we try not to, but if necessary surgery is an option. Sometimes there are little bone spurs where we have to take a piece of bone out of a joint and create an artificial joint in the toe. A multitude of things like that can occur but in our practice we try to take the non-surgical/conservative approach.

So at the end of the day, corns are caused by friction, friction needs to be evaluated on why you’re getting it, and there are lot’s of treatment applications.”

Dr. Wachtel and his staff serve their patients with the utmost care at their three office locations in North Andover, Lowell, and Haverhill.