Women’s manicure cuts turn into rare nail cancer caused by HPV

In November 2021, Grace Garcia visited her new nail salon for a manicure. She has learned that she has nail cancer Because of the Human papillomavirus (HPV)a rare phenomenon.

“She probably used the tool on the previous person. I don’t know,” Garcia, 50, of San Gabriel, Calif., told TODAY.com. … popped up.It looked like a wart and I was like, ‘What the hell is this?'”

Manicure leads to months of problems

Just before Thanksgiving 2021, Garcia hit the nail salon for a manicure. She’s been doing nails for about 20 years and she couldn’t get an appointment at her usual place. So she scheduled her one at a spa near her place of work. During the manicure, the manicurist grazes the cuticle on Garcia’s right ring finger.

“She cut me, but the cut wasn’t a normal cuticle cut. She hurt me deeply and it was one of the first things that happened to me,” Garcia explained. “I’ve been doing[nails]for years and years. I was upset.” Garcia can’t remember if she ever saw a manicurist open an unused tool.

“I don’t remember it at all,” she says. “It’s always a big sight when they take out the tools and unpack the packets. I don’t remember it. I should.”

When I got home, I applied antibiotic ointment to the wound. A few days later, when she wasn’t feeling well, she returned to the salon to warn her employees of their mistake.

“I came back upset and said the woman cut me, but my finger still haunts me,” says Garcia. We fired her (later) over a number of complaints.’ That was it.

Concerned that the cut wasn’t healing properly, she was seen by a doctor who prescribed antibiotics for her finger.

“It never got better, but it wasn’t worse. It was weird,” she says.

Her fingers felt soft. It hurts when she accidentally hits something. She eventually healed, but instead a bump appeared that was darker in color than the rest of her skin.

Garcia visited his doctor and asked about it again. They thought it was a “callus from writing,” she recalls, but she wasn’t really using her ring finger when writing.Her doctor recommended seeing it.

When she saw her gynecologist in April 2022, five months after her nail appointment, she showed him her finger.

Dermatologists also advised to keep an eye on it. The bump went from looking like a bruise to looking like an open wound and eventually a wart. she underwent a biopsy.

“I knew it wasn’t good,” she says.

Nail cancer caused by HPV

Nail cancer is still rare, mostly melanoma, according to Dr. Teo Soleymani, a UCLA Health dermatologist who treated Garcia. For Garcia, she had squamous cell carcinoma. This is a common skin cancer that is less aggressive than melanoma. But her cause, her HPV, is a rarity.

“It’s very rare, for several reasons. Generally speaking, strains that cause cancer in terms of HPV tend to be more sexually transmitted,” Soleymani told TODAY.com. . “In the case of Grace, she had an injury and that became her entry point. was able to infect

Garcia’s cancer progressed rapidly.

“It was interesting because her timeline was about three months, which is pretty short for squamous cell carcinoma,” explains Soleymani. “It is also consistent that she had a high-risk HPV strain of hers, indicating that this is not just a benign cut.”

But thanks to her determination, she met Soleymani early on and was diagnosed with stage 1 cancer.

“Your outcome will be entirely determined by how quickly you find them, and very often you will be completely cured,” Soleymani says. No, it probably saved my finger from being amputated.”

Played by Soleimani Mohs surgery She has a procedure that allows doctors to see “100% of the edge” of cancer. This means that doctors can remove all the cancer without removing too much skin, providing a “high cure rate.”

“She doesn’t need radiation because we can see 100% of the margins with the Mohs microscopy technique,” ​​says Soleymani. “She does not need additional treatment.”

The most common nail cancer seen by dermatologists is melanoma, which usually appears as black or dark brown streaks under the nail. It looks like

“Anytime there’s a growth that doesn’t go away in about four weeks, it’s kind of a cue for us,” Soleymani says. “You should see a dermatologist.”

He recommends HPV vaccination for everyone to prevent the development of HPV-related cancers.

“Vaccines have been shown in many new studies over the past few years not only to reduce the incidence of common things such as warts and apparently cervical cancer, but also to reduce skin risks and incidence. It’s an HPV-related cancer,” he says.

life after cancer

Garcia’s nails appear to have returned to normal, but she still feels traumatized.

“We think of manicures as something special,” she says. “And this happens.”

Garcia needs to follow up with a dermatologist for routine skin cancer screenings. She feels it’s important to speak up about her experience, raise awareness, and encourage people who actually get manicures and pedicures to make sure they see manicurists use new tools. also encourages people to be persistent if they feel something is wrong with their health.

“I knew something was wrong, so I fought from day one,” says Garcia.