Cryosurgery

Cryosurgery is also known as cryotherapy.  Most of you are probably aware that the prefix cryo has to do with freezing temperatures.  Cryosurgery has to do with surgical procedures that involve freezing diseased or abnormal tissue in order to get the tissue to tear apart.

For example, if a patient has plantar warts that are being stubborn and the patient wants them gone, a doctor can perform cryotherapy (cryosurgery) on them by applying either argon gas or liquid nitrogen to the affected area.  This will destroy the tissue because when the tissue is frozen in this fashion it causes ice crystals to actually form inside the tissue and this in turn causes it to break apart.

This is generally called a non-invasive surgical procedure and can be performed in little time with generally no side effects.

If you are having external skin tags such as moles, warts or even skin tags then you may be a candidate for cryosurgery.  This is a highly effective treatment and only takes a few minutes.  There is no recovery time necessitated by this procedure and once it is done the affected skin will fall off later all by itself.  In these types of treatments the nitrogen is applied to the affected area with either a spray device or a cotton swab.  This is the most popular way that physicians treat moles, warts and skin tags.  There are also applications for this with small areas of skin cancer but that is definitely a topic of discussion between you and your physician.

You can try this procedure at home in a small way with some of the over the counter wart remedies but it is better to let a trained professional take care of this for you.