Ingrown toenails

• Pain and tenderness in your toe along one or both sides of the nail
• Redness around your toenail
• Swelling of your toe around the nail
• Infection of the tissue around your toenail

Causes

Ingrown toenails result when the nail grows into the flesh of your toe, often the big toe. Common causes include:

• Wearing shoes that crowd your toenails
• Cutting your toenails too short or not straight across
• Injury to your toenail
• Unusually curved toenails

Complications

Left untreated or undetected, an ingrown toenail can infect the underlying bone and lead to a serious bone infection.

Complications can be especially severe if you have diabetes because the circulation and nerve supply to your feet can be impaired. Therefore, any relatively minor injury to your foot — cut, scrape, corn, callus or ingrown toenail — may not heal properly and lead to infection. A difficult-to-heal open sore (foot ulcer) may require surgery to prevent gangrene — the decay and death of tissue resulting from an interruption in blood flow to a certain area of your body.

Diagnosis

Your doctor can usually diagnose an ingrown toenail based on your symptoms and a physical examination of your nail and the surrounding skin.

References:

http://patient.info/health/ingrowing-ingrown-toenails

http://www.medicinenet.com/ingrown_toenail/article.htm

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/ingrown_toenails/article_em.htm

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Ingrown-Toenails

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrown_nail

http://www.foothealthfacts.org/footankleinfo/ingrown-toenail.htm