CRYOTHERAPY

A healthcare professional wearing black gloves drawing on a patient's arm with a blue pen, while the patient lies on a medical bed.

What is Cryotherapy?

Cryotherapy is a safe and highly effective method of freezing and removing benign skin lesions such as skin tags, pigmentation, solar lentigines (sunspots, liver spots etc.), milia, seborrheic keratosis, warts and verrucas.

It uses highly pressured liquid nitrous oxide to destroy the tissue quickly and with little residual stinging. Nitrous oxide destroys tissue by freezing the intercellular fluid and forming ice shards and crystals that rupture the cell membrane, destroying the cell. Because it is delivered directly to the lesion, and not the healthy surrounding tissue, it can safely treat lesions on the face and areas around the eyes.

A healthcare professional wearing black gloves uses a blue laser device to perform a medical procedure on a patient's leg.

What to expect

Cryotherapy is quicker than other treatments and patients can be in and out in seconds. It requires no anaesthesia and has minimal scaring. There are no limitations on activity except to protect the area from damage or abrasion, patients can work, bath, swim, immediately after the treatment. There’s no cut, no bleeding, no sutures and no risk of infection.

A typical freeze on viral infections may last from 5 to 10 seconds for a small flat wart, and up to 45 seconds for a full thickness plantar wart. For general purposes, most lesions take about 2 to 30 seconds.

Most lesions will respond to a single treatment. However, some deeper lesions may take several treatments to get results.

Occasionally, a blister might form and persist for up to 5 days after treatment. After the lesion scabs over, healing depends on how deep the wound is. Typically, healing takes between 2 – 6 weeks, depending on the length of freeze and location.