Condition

Plantar Warts

Plantar warts are warts on the sole of the foot. Body weight presses them flat and inward, which is why they often feel like a stone in the shoe and why they are the slowest warts to treat.
Dr. Schwarz, MD · Board-certified dermatologistLast reviewed September 8, 2026
16:9 hero for Plantar Warts. Never cropped: the tone strip and the corner logo depend on the full frame.

Start here

A plantar wart is an ordinary wart in an awkward place - the same virus as one on a finger, except you stand on it, so it grows inward under a thick pad of callus. That callus is what hurts and what keeps treatment from reaching the wart, so filing is not optional. Foot warts are the slowest of all of them, and three months of daily treatment is a fair trial, not a long one. If you have diabetes or any loss of feeling in your feet, do not treat this at home - acid and blades on a foot that cannot feel pain is genuinely risky.

— Dr. Schwarz, Board Certified Dermatologist

Key Facts

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How commonCommon - one of the most frequent foot complaints seen in children and young adults
Who gets itMost often school-age children, teenagers, athletes, swimmers and anyone who uses shared showers or changing rooms
Curable or managedCurable - they clear once the immune system recognizes the virus, but they are the slowest warts to get rid of
Prescription neededNot always. Over-the-counter salicylic acid with regular filing clears many of them
Time to improveThree months of daily treatment before judging it. Untreated they often last a year or more

What It Is

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A plantar wart is a wart on the sole, caused by human papillomavirus, or HPV. It is the same family that causes hand warts, and the strains are ordinary skin ones, not the strains linked to genital warts.

Pressure makes it different. On a finger a wart grows outward into a bump. On the sole, body weight pushes it flat and inward and the skin builds a thick callus over the top, so it looks like a flat, rough, slightly yellow patch of hard skin, sometimes with a small dip in the middle and often with tiny black dots. Those dots are clotted blood vessels, not seeds and not roots.

Two signs help. The fine lines that make a footprint run around a plantar wart rather than across it, while on a callus they run straight through. And a wart hurts more squeezed side to side than pressed straight down, the reverse of a corn.

A single deep plantar wart is sometimes called a myrmecia. When many small warts merge into one large flat plaque, often on the ball of the foot or the heel, it is a mosaic wart, and mosaic warts are more stubborn than single ones.

Plantar warts are harmless. They do not turn into skin cancer and they do not damage the foot. Treat them because they hurt to walk on, they spread across the foot and to other people, and they can take years to go on their own.

Symptoms

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One rough spot on the sole

Single Wart

A thickened, rough spot on the sole with tiny black dots in it, which are clotted vessels rather than seeds or roots. Body weight pushes it inward, so it feels like standing on a stone. It is often more painful when pinched from the sides than pressed.
A cluster grown together

Mosaic

Many small warts grouped into a plaque, most often on the ball of the foot or under the toes. These are more stubborn than single warts. Treatment usually takes months.
Hidden under hard skin

Callused Over

A wart buried under thick callus so that only hard skin is visible. Paring back the surface reveals the black dots and lets treatment work. Warts and plain calluses are treated differently, so telling them apart matters.

How It Looks by Skin Tone

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A thickened yellow-tan lump on the ball of the foot on fair light skin, with a faint pink ring around it and several tiny black dots in the middle.A thickened tan-gray lump on the ball of the foot on medium olive-tan skin. The pink ring is faint, the black dots are small, and the fine skin lines of the sole stop at the edge of the lump.A thickened gray-brown lump on the ball of the foot on brown skin, only slightly different in color from the surrounding sole, with no visible ring of redness around it.A thickened gray lump on the ball of the foot on deep dark brown skin, almost the same color as the sole around it, with the black dots barely visible.
LightMediumBrownDeep

On deeper skin tones a plantar wart is often the same color as the surrounding sole or slightly gray, the redness around it is hard to see, and the tell-tale black dots are less obvious. So they get treated as a callus or a corn for months first. Paring the surface down reveals the dots and the interrupted skin lines, and it is worth asking for.

Freezing and other treatments that blister the skin work by causing injury, and injured skin on deeper skin tones commonly heals with a pale ring or a dark mark that can outlast the wart by a year. On the sole that matters less cosmetically than on the face, but it is a real reason to favor the slower approach - daily salicylic acid with regular filing, and paring in clinic - and to keep freezing brief. If a wart is treated on a visible part of the foot or ankle, daily sunscreen there helps stop a dark mark deepening.

Where It Shows Up

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Front view of a whole body with red marks on the soles of both feet. The rest of the body is clear.
The soles, at the pressure points
They sit on the sole, and mostly on the parts that take weight — the ball of the foot and the heel. Pressure pushes them inward instead of letting them stand up, which is why they feel like a stone in the shoe and hurt when you squeeze the sides.

What Happens in the Skin

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This is what is going wrong under the skin, in the order it happens. Click a step to see it.

How Plantar Warts happens
Skin basics
BARRIEREPIDERMISDERMIS0NORMAL SKIN ON THE SOLE1THE VIRUS GETS IN THROUGH SOFTENED SKIN2IT GROWS INWARD UNDER A CALLUS3THE IMMUNE SYSTEM HAS NOT RECOGNIZED IT YET

The skin on the sole is the thickest on the body. It takes your weight all day and stays sealed.

The same HPV, picked up on wet shared floors. Skin softened by a pool, a shower or sweaty shoes lets it through a break too small to notice.

Anywhere else a wart grows outward. Here your weight presses it flat, so it grows down into the sole under a thick callus - which is why it hurts to stand on and looks like a callus with black dots in it.

As with any wart, the virus sits above the blood supply. Treatment works by wearing the callus down and irritating the skin enough to draw the immune system to it.

The outer film of dead cells and oil. It holds water in and keeps irritants out, and it is thinner than a sheet of paper. Almost every dry, itchy, stinging skin problem starts here.

The outer layer, and the only one anything in a jar reaches. It renews itself constantly: a cell made at the bottom takes about a month to reach the surface and flake off. Most of what a skincare product does, it does here.

The living layer underneath, holding the blood vessels, the nerves and the collagen. It is where lasting change happens and it is hard to reach: most of what is sold for the skin never gets this far.

Plantar warts are caused by human papillomavirus, and they form in four steps, in order. First, the sole meets the virus, which survives well on warm wet surfaces - pool surrounds, communal showers, locker rooms, gym mats, dance floors. Second, it needs a way through. The sole is thick, but skin that has been wet a while is soft and easy to breach, and cracked heels, athlete's foot, blisters and small cuts all give it an opening. Third, the virus infects cells in the outer skin layer and makes them divide far faster than normal, building a thickened patch. Fourth, the immune system never recognizes it, because the virus stays in the outer layer where there is little blood supply and few immune cells.

Pressure shapes the result. Standing and walking push the wart inward, and the foot lays a callus over the top. The callus is why it hurts, and why foot warts are slower to treat than hand warts - anything applied to the surface has to get through it first.

There is usually a gap of one to six months between picking up the virus and noticing the wart, which is why almost nobody can say where it came from.

Risk Factors

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Plantar warts are about exposure and how easily the virus gets through the sole. Little of it is hygiene, and some is not controllable.

Age & immunity
Age
School-age children and teenagers get most plantar warts, because their immune systems have met fewer HPV strains.
Age & immunity
A weakened immune system
Transplant medicines, chemotherapy, long-term oral steroids and HIV make warts more numerous, larger and harder to clear.
Age & immunity
Having had warts before
Predicts more, because it reflects how your immune system handles this virus.
Environment & work
Barefoot use of shared wet floors
Swimming pools, communal showers, locker rooms, gyms, dance studios, martial arts mats.
Environment & work
Sports and dance
Barefoot training, shared mats and repeated foot trauma raise the rate.
Environment & work
Living with someone who has them
Shared bath mats, shower floors, towels and pumice stones.
Skin barrier
Sweaty feet
Damp all day inside shoes, the outer layer softens and the virus crosses it easily.
Skin barrier
Athlete's foot and cracked heels
Broken, peeling or fissured skin is an open door. Treating it makes new warts less likely.

Course

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Plantar warts do clear on their own, but slowly. In children most go within about two years untreated. In adults it takes longer and is less predictable, and warts sitting for years are the least likely to go.

The first monthsLeft alone
One wart seeds others nearby

A single wart often spreads to the skin around it over months. Several can merge into one flat plaque, a mosaic wart, and the whole area is then harder to treat. That is the argument against waiting.

SoleBall of the foot
As it thickensAny point
Pain follows thickness, not size

A wart under a weight-bearing area builds callus faster and hurts sooner. People change how they walk, which over time causes aching further up.

Other footKneeHip
Signs it is clearingWhat to look for
Pain settles first

The surface stops rebuilding thick callus between filings and the black dots disappear. Then the fine skin lines run across the area again instead of curving around it. That is the sign to trust.

Surface of the wart
Nearly clearA week or two more
A smooth patch is not proof

These signs are easy to misread. A smooth patch with the skin lines still interrupted still has virus in it and needs another week or two.

Once clearedLong term
It rarely returns in the same place

New warts elsewhere are a fresh exposure, or a spot already seeded.

Elsewhere on the foot

What Makes It Better & Worse

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A plantar wart is four problems, and on the foot the callus is half of them, which is why a wart being treated stops improving.

What is driving yours?

FATBARRIEREPIDERMISDERMIS

The same HPV, picked up on wet shared floors. Skin softened by a pool, a shower or sweaty shoes lets it through a break too small to notice.

The same HPV, picked up on wet shared floors. Skin softened by a pool, a shower or sweaty shoes lets it through a break too small to notice.

Anywhere else a wart grows outward. Here your weight presses it flat, so it grows down into the sole under a thick callus - which is why it hurts to stand on and looks like a callus with black dots in it.

What helps

  • Covering the wart during the day Stops spread and stops you picking.
  • Dry feet Changed socks, rotated shoes, flip-flops in shared showers.

What makes it worse

  • Going barefoot in shared showers and gyms Where most start.
  • Picking at the wart Moves virus to your fingers and the rest of the foot.
  • Sharing foot tools and linen A file carries virus to the next thing it touches.

What helps

  • Treat athlete's foot and cracked heels Intact skin is much harder to infect.

What makes it worse

  • Feet that stay damp all day Sweat softens the skin until it stops sealing.
  • Broken skin on the feet Athlete's foot and cracked heels are the way in.
  • Cutting or digging at it at home There is no root, so it leaves a wound.

What helps

  • Salicylic acid at foot strength The best evidence of any at-home option.
  • Soak, file, apply, cover The wrong order is why treatment stalls.
  • Filing regularly between treatments Keeps acid against live infected skin.
  • Paring in clinic A blade shaves the callus down painlessly.
  • Freezing in clinic, called cryotherapy It works, but hurts more on the sole.
  • A padded ring or offloading insole Takes the weight off so walking is comfortable.
  • Give any plantar wart treatment 12 weeks Foot warts are slower than hand warts.

What makes it worse

  • Not filing the callus down first Acid never reaches the infected skin.
  • Walking on the side of the foot Loads the knee and hip, does nothing.
  • Stopping as soon as the pain goes Pain settles before the virus is gone.

What helps

  • Immune-based treatments Imiquimod and candida antigen recruit the immune system.

What makes it worse

  • Medicines that suppress the immune system Make warts larger and slower.

How These Treatments Work

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Treatments for Plantar Warts do not all work in the same place. Tap one to see where it acts.

Pick a treatment
Skin basics
BARRIEREPIDERMISDERMISREMOVES THE THICK SKINREMOVES INFECTED SKINFREEZES ITSTOPS IT SPREADINGMOST CLEAR ON THEIR OWN

Nothing reaches the wart through a thick layer of callus.

The mainstay, and it takes months of nightly use.

Harder on the sole, where the skin is thick and treatment is sore to walk on.

Pool floors and shared showers are where these are picked up.

Slower on the feet than anywhere else.

The outer film of dead cells and oil. It holds water in and keeps irritants out, and it is thinner than a sheet of paper. Almost every dry, itchy, stinging skin problem starts here.

The outer layer, and the only one anything in a jar reaches. It renews itself constantly: a cell made at the bottom takes about a month to reach the surface and flake off. Most of what a skincare product does, it does here.

The living layer underneath, holding the blood vessels, the nerves and the collagen. It is where lasting change happens and it is hard to reach: most of what is sold for the skin never gets this far.

Over-the-Counter Products

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Everything here you can buy without seeing anyone.

Paula's Choice 2% BHA exfoliant, La Roche-Posay Effaclar cleanser and a CeraVe psoriasis cream pumpLabeled cutaway diagram of a single skin pore, headed Salicylic Acid. The epidermis is a brick-textured band across the top and the dermis is pink below it, with a yellow oil gland at the base of the pore and a small cluster of bacteria inside it. A single dark navy callout line points into the top of the pore: decreases dead cells in pore. There are no other callouts, so the drawing shows one effect where the other ingredient diagrams show two or three.
Strong evidence
The best-evidenced treatment you can buy, and for the sole it is used at foot strength, far higher than the acne version. The order matters: soak the foot, file the surface, apply, cover. Applied to an unfiled callus it never reaches the infected skin, which is the usual reason it seems not to work. Twelve weeks of nightly use is a fair trial.
Soaking and filing
Soaking and filing
Moderate evidence
Not an optional extra. Ten minutes in warm water softens the callus, then a file or pumice takes the dead surface down until the skin looks live again. It relieves the pain by itself, because the pain comes from the hard pad. Use a file kept only for that foot, and never share it.
A padded ring or offloading insole
A padded ring or offloading insole
Limited evidence
A felt ring around the wart, or an insole that shifts weight off it, makes walking comfortable while the treatment works. It does nothing to the virus. It is worth using early, because it stops the limping that causes aching in the knee and hip.
Home freezing kits
Home freezing kits
Limited evidence
The sprays sold in pharmacies do not get as cold as the liquid nitrogen used in clinic, and on the sole they usually cannot get through the callus at all. They are more useful on hands than on feet. If you try one, file the surface down first and do not use it on a foot with reduced feeling.
Duct tape
Duct tape
Weak evidence
Covering the wart with tape between treatments is cheap and harmless, and the trials of it are mixed at best. It keeps the surface soft and stops picking, which may be most of the benefit. Reasonable to add, especially for a child, but not a replacement for acid and filing.

Prescriptions

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These need a prescription.

A white cream tube lying on its side on a white background, with a plain white label reading Fluorouracil and a blue swoosh beneath it.
5-fluorouracil cream
Limited evidence
A chemotherapy cream used at low strength, applied under tape to a wart that has not responded to salicylic acid. It kills the rapidly dividing infected cells. It stings, it needs the callus filed down to work, and it is avoided in pregnancy.
A white cream tube lying on its side on a white background, with a plain white label reading Imiquimod and a blue swoosh beneath it.
Imiquimod cream
Limited evidence
This one works by asking the immune system to notice the infection rather than by destroying the wart, which is the step the foot is stuck on. Most of its evidence is in warts elsewhere, and on the thick skin of the sole it is usually combined with filing or with salicylic acid. Expect redness and soreness while it is working.
Five white jars of 40% urea cream lined up, several also listing 2% salicylic acid
Urea 40% cream
Limited evidence
Not a wart treatment. It dissolves hard callus, so it is used under a dressing to thin the pad over a wart that is too thick to file comfortably, and to treat the cracked heels that let the virus in. It makes the other treatments reach further.
An amber prescription bottle lying on its side on a white background with a plain white label reading Cimetidine, and six small round white tablets spilled out in front of it.
Cimetidine tablets
Weak evidence
A stomach medicine that also nudges the immune system, sometimes tried in children with many warts because it is easy to take and well tolerated. Controlled trials have not shown it beats a dummy tablet. It is a reasonable add-on if you want to try something painless, not a treatment to rely on.

Procedures

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These are done in the office, usually over several visits.

16:9 hero for Cryotherapy (Liquid Nitrogen). Never cropped: the tone strip and the corner logo depend on the full frame.Diagram: how Cryotherapy (Liquid Nitrogen) works in the skin
Moderate evidence
Freezing in clinic, repeated every two to three weeks. Over several months the results are broadly similar to salicylic acid used properly, so it is one reasonable option rather than the top of a ladder. On the sole it is more painful than elsewhere, walking is sore for a day or two, and it works far better if the callus is pared first.
Paring the callus in clinic
Moderate evidence
Shaving the dead top layer off with a sterile blade. It does not hurt, because that layer has no nerve supply. It confirms the diagnosis by revealing the black dots, it takes the pain away on the day by removing the hard pad, and it lets every other treatment reach the wart. Most visits for a plantar wart start here.
Candida antigen injections
Moderate evidence
A small amount of a yeast protein is injected into the wart to make the immune system react in that spot and, in doing so, recognize the virus. It is one of the better options for stubborn or multiple foot warts, and warts elsewhere sometimes clear at the same time. It takes a course of injections a few weeks apart, and it aches for a day or two afterwards.
Bleomycin injections
Moderate evidence
A chemotherapy drug injected directly into a wart that has failed everything else, usually a deep single one on the sole. Clearance rates are good. It is painful, the area turns black and forms a crust, and it is kept for stubborn cases in specialist hands. It is not used in pregnancy.
16:9 hero for Cantharidin. Never cropped: the tone strip and the corner logo depend on the full frame.Diagram: how Cantharidin works in the skin
Limited evidence
A blistering liquid painted on in clinic and washed off a few hours later, which lifts the wart away from the skin beneath. It is painless to apply, which makes it a common choice for children. The blister that follows can be sore to walk on for a few days, and on the thick skin of the sole it often needs repeating.
A gloved hand guiding a laser handpiece along a patient's lower leg16:9 hero for Nd:YAG Laser. Never cropped: the tone strip and the corner logo depend on the full frame.
Limited evidence
A laser that heats the blood vessels feeding the wart and cuts off its supply, used for foot warts that have failed simpler treatments. It reaches deeper than freezing does. It is done with local anesthetic, it is sore for several days afterwards, and it usually takes more than one session.
A gloved clinician treating a small dark spot on a patient's shoulder with a fine handheld instrument16:9 hero for Electrodesiccation and Curettage. Never cropped: the tone strip and the corner logo depend on the full frame.
Limited evidence
Burning and scraping the wart out under local anesthetic. It clears the visible wart in one go, which is why people ask for it. On the sole it leaves a wound that takes weeks to heal and can leave a scar you then walk on, and the wart can still return, so it is a late option rather than an early one.
16:9 hero for Surgical Excision. Never cropped: the tone strip and the corner logo depend on the full frame.Diagram: how Surgical Excision works in the skin
Weak evidence
Cutting a plantar wart out is generally avoided. There is no root to remove, so surgery takes healthy tissue with it, and it leaves a scar on a weight-bearing surface that can hurt more than the wart did. Recurrence around the scar is common. It is used for a growth that needs sending to the laboratory, not to get rid of an ordinary wart.

When to See a Dermatologist

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A small, painless plantar wart on a child's foot is fine to treat at home or just watch, and plenty never need a dermatologist. Book if it hurts enough to change how you walk, if it is spreading or merging into one flat patch, if it is bleeding or looks infected, if three months of nightly treatment with proper filing has changed nothing, or if warts keep coming back. One group should not treat these at home - with diabetes, peripheral neuropathy, poor circulation or reduced feeling in the feet, see a clinician, because acid and blades on a foot that cannot feel pain can cause an ulcer that heals slowly. Go in for a diagnosis too if a growth on an adult sole keeps enlarging, bleeds easily, has an odd color or has not responded to correct treatment, because a few skin cancers appear on the sole and look like a stubborn wart.

— Dr. Schwarz, Board Certified Dermatologist

Complications

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It spreads across the foot

One wart often seeds the skin around it over months, and several small ones can merge into one flat plaque, called a mosaic wart. Once that happens the whole area is harder to treat than the single spot would have been. Keeping it covered, not picking at it, and not sharing files or pumice stones is most of the prevention.

An ulcer in a foot that is numb

Acid and blades on a foot that does not register pain normally can burn through more skin than intended and leave an open sore that is slow to heal. That is a far bigger problem than the wart was. If you have diabetes, nerve damage in the feet, poor circulation in the legs or any reduced feeling, this is treated by a clinician and not at home.

Walking differently to avoid it

A wart under a weight-bearing area hurts with every step, and people quietly shift their weight to the side of the foot to keep off it. Months of walking that way causes aching in the other foot, the knee and the hip. Thinning the callus, or a padded ring that takes the weight off, usually fixes the walking long before the wart is gone.

Lookalikes

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Corn or callus

This is the mix-up that happens most, in both directions. Three things separate them. The fine skin lines run straight through a callus and curve around a wart. A wart pares down to tiny black dots, while a callus or corn pares down to smooth dot-free skin and a corn has a dense central core. And a wart usually hurts more pinched from the sides, a corn more pressed straight down.

Melanoma

Rare on the sole, but it happens, and in the early stages it can be taken for a stubborn wart or a bruise. The differences are color and behavior: a melanoma is usually an uneven brown, black or gray patch with an irregular edge, it keeps growing or changing, and it does not respond to wart treatment. A growth on an adult's sole that enlarges, bleeds easily or looks an unusual color should be examined rather than treated at home.

Myths

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  • "It has roots that have to be dug out." It does not. A plantar wart sits in the outer layer of skin. The black dots are clotted blood vessels, not roots. Digging reaches healthy tissue and scars a surface you walk on.
  • "It is just a callus." They get confused constantly. Skin lines run straight through a callus and curve around a wart, a wart pares down to tiny black dots, and it hurts more pinched from the sides than pressed from above.
  • "You catch them from dirty feet." Cleanliness has nothing to do with it. The virus lives on wet floors, and getting one depends on whether your immune system has met that strain.
  • "Freezing is the strongest option, so it is the best one." On the sole freezing is more painful, and over several months its results are broadly similar to salicylic acid used properly. One option among several, not the top of a ladder.
  • "Once it stops hurting, it is gone." Pain settles as soon as the callus is thinned, weeks before the virus clears. Stopping there is why it comes back.
  • "Duct tape cures them." The evidence is mixed at best. Cheap, harmless and reasonable to add, especially for children, but it does not replace acid and filing.
  • "They will spread all over my foot if I do nothing." Spread happens, slowly and usually to a few nearby spots. Picking and sharing files and floors drive it far more than leaving it alone.

Questions Patients Ask

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How do I know it is a wart and not a callus?

Look at the fine skin lines. They run straight through a callus and curve around a wart. A wart hurts more pinched from the sides than pressed from above, and pared down it shows tiny black dots. Paring in clinic answers it in a minute.

Why does it hurt so much for something so small?

Because you stand on it. The foot lays thick callus over the wart, and that pad presses on sensitive skin with every step. Thinning it takes the pain away well before the wart is gone.

How long will this take?

Longer than you want. Plantar warts are the slowest to treat, and three months of nightly treatment is a fair trial, not a long one. Some take six months or more, and untreated ones last a year or two.

Can I still swim and go to the gym?

Yes. Cover the wart with a waterproof plaster, wear flip-flops in the changing room and shower, and dry your feet afterwards. No reason to stop training.

Will it spread to my family?

It can, mainly through shared shower floors, bath mats, towels and files. Keeping it covered, wearing something on your feet in shared bathrooms, and not sharing pumice stones covers most of it.

Can I cut it out myself?

No. There is no root to remove, so cutting takes out healthy tissue without removing all the virus and leaves an open wound on a surface you walk on. That invites infection and a scar, and the wart usually grows back. Paring is done in clinic with a sterile blade.

References

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