Why a Medical Pedicure

As a Podiatrist I often see, many preventable foot related conditions. Now that summer is over, many toe nail polishes are coming off, the curse of the toe nail fungal infection is ever present.

Whilst I do believe that foot care is extremely important (just like brushing your teeth), the places where you go to access these services can be the potential danger. The reality is that if the equipment being used is not sterile – it has not undergone an autoclaving procedure in its own pouch under certain conditions, the equipment is NOT sterile. This leads to a number of potential health risks, not just a fungal infection.

In general terms, the fungal infection is not life threatening in most cases, it is really hard to resolve and often times one treatment will not resolve the infection. It’s a really annoying condition to be treating. Not only can your feet become really itchy and smelly, the skin can peel away leaving behind raw tissue and cracks that are painful.

The most concerning problem arises when a person who is accessing an unhygenic or non sterile environment and they have a condition such as diabetes or health conditions that require aspirin, warfarin or other blood thining medication. If the person is cut, blood flow is quite fast and it is hard to stem the flow of blood. Having frequented a number of cheap manicure and pedicure places entirely for research, I have never ever seen a bandaid or betadine placed on a client. I have seen the potential health hazard be ignored and the treatment continue.

Further, if a person who has recently frequented an unhygenic salon and has an illness such as hepatitis or even HIV and they have been cut using the same instrument as what is being used on you, the risk for cross contamination or infection is very likely.

In other cases that have presented to my clinic, I have seen ingrowing toe nails caused by poor cutting of the toe nails require surgical intervention, cellulitis (a systemic infection, ie whole body infection), and osteomyelitis (an infection in the bone) due to these salons.

In my view the potential dangers of these salons definitely out weigh the rewards. Time and time again I’m told “if only I had known” or “I didn’t expect it to happen to me”.

The current statistics are such:

• One out of every ten people will leave a salon with an infection and this is rising as fast as the salon’s popularity.
• If a salon is seeing on average ten people in an hour, that means one an hour.

So I ask – ‘is it really worth it”?