Damage to a toenail will be particularly painful, particularly if it is an acute accident. This kind of trauma can bring about an initial acute issue or persistent long term issue with the nail thickness as well as the shape. The actual acute injury for example coming from an accident or badly stubbing the toe is clear when it occurs. What is much less obvious is the nail changes which happen from injury, however no problems are noticed until a few months later on when the nail gets thicker and deformed.

The most common reason for a disability to a toenail is injury. That injury could result from a one-off event such as dropping a stone upon the foot or even it might come from the repetitive injury with wearing shoes that happen to be too tight and the constant force on the toe nail from that. This may also come from losing the toenail through the foot slipping around in the shoe, for example in tennis shoes. This damage could affect a single or several or every one of the toe nails. The toenail plate grows thicker due to harm to the nail matrix or growing section of the toe nail. Together with getting thicker this toenail plate can also be out of shape or deformed. If your toe nail plate is simply thickened, this gets described as onychauxis. If the nail plate is disfigured and also thicker, then that will get called onychogryphosis. If after the toe nail is traumatised and also the toenail growing region is just not harmed, the nail may very well come back a normal thickness, but can have a ridge of thickened section of toenail which grows out when the toe nail grows.

To manage the acute toenail damage, there is going to have to be some medication that can help with relief of pain. Any loose bits of the nail that may be taken out without any concerns needs to be detached. The toenails along with the surrounding area should be carefully cleaned out with an antiseptic. Occasionally what's remaining of the toenail is removed with a local anaesthetic. It is vital that the nail is safe having a wound dressing and if there's an open wound there, safeguards need to be taken to prevent any infection developing. The treating of the onychauxis and also onychogryphosis problems require a longterm plan and not just the one-off handling of the acute injury. Decent treatments for the acute event will reduce the risk of these kinds of thick toenail types of problems. The only way to deal with the onychauxis type issues is to keep the nails cut short and using a nail file to reduce the thickness. That might need lots of effort and hard work, particularly if the nail is deformed too. It is usually a good idea to go to the podiatrist to have the nails cut and lowered down. They will typically use a high-speed burr to reduce the thickness. However, when the damage is in the growing area of the nail it will only thicken up once again meaning that onychauxis is an ongoing problem. Once they do end up being too hard to take care of, after that long term surgery of the toenail can be an alternative.