DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2015.v03i01.054

Pages: 272-275

Ingrown toe nails whose synonyms are Onychocryptosis, Unguis incarnatus, and embedded toe nails are largely a disease of civilized society. The condition is rare in societies where shoe wearing is not common or who make their own. The numerous methods used for treating embedded toe nail are testimony to the lack of generally acceptable procedure with a low failure rate. There is paucity of local publication on this disease entity. The study is a hospital based case series of 55 patient that were treated for embedded toenail in LAUTECH Teaching Hospitals between year January 2009 and December 2012. The age and sex distributions we found in this study are similar to that found by other workers and support the contention that embedded toe nails is predominantly a disease of young males. By combining wedge resection of the nail fold with either partial matrixectomy or nail ablation, we recorded 99% cure rate, which by far surpasses all the traditional methods.