If you ever had an ingrown toenail that never responded to your “bathroom” surgery then you may want to read this to see why.

Typically when the nail plate irritates the surrounding nail fold, it breaks the king and gets covered by the inflamed nail fold.  When one tries to “cut the corner” out, they typically miss the entire side and cut a portion of the nail and apply pressure to pull it out.  A spike of nail is left behind and continues to grow and eventually is stuck into the nail fold which complicates the situation even further.  Now bacteria is enabled to enter the skin and an infection occurs.  When this occurs, the only way to remove the nail is through surgical excision and excising the entire side of the nail.

See the below images for a better understanding.

 

The above image shows the toe after the ingrown nail has been removed. You can see the swelling and redness that was occurring to the nail fold from the nail plate.  Removing the nail border involves a local injection to anesthetize the toe and the nail is simply excised. Recovery is several days and often does not even require antibiotics.