Many patients worry about their plantar wart recovery because the SWIFT therapy healing process differs from other treatments. Rather than seeing immediate changes in your wart’s appearance, SWIFT results may take weeks or even months to become visible. Not to worry: SWIFT’s microwave therapy starts working beneath the surface of your skin. Immediately after your first session, it starts activating your body’s immune system to fight the virus that causes warts—the recovery begins long before surface skin changes take effect. Rarely, some patients fail to respond to SWIFT therapy. So, to help you distinguish healing from treatment failure, this post explains the typical SWIFT healing timeline including the visual changes you should expect to see in treated warts, and when those changes should appear.
Inside the SWIFT Therapy Healing Process ![SWIFT therapy used on foot]()
Immediately after Smyrna podiatrist Dr. Alvin Cowans delivers SWIFT treatment, you can return to your daily activities—there won’t be a wound to dress or restrictions on your activities. On the day of treatment, it’s normal to experience mild discomfort. The treatment area may be tender or a little red; mild swelling may also occur. However, this should resolve in a day or two. For the rest of the week following your first SWIFT session, it’s likely that you won’t see any changes to the wart’s appearance. If is very normal for it to look exactly the same as it did before treatment. It’s also normal for the wart’s color to darken slightly in the first week after treatment.
Plantar Wart Recovery Process: Two to Six Weeks After SWIFT
During this period of the SWIFT therapy healing process, you’ll start to see changes in the wart’s appearance—that’s because your body’s immune system is starting to recognize and fight the HPV virus that caused the lesion to form. Now, the wart may begin to shrink or flatten. You may notice small black dots appearing in the wart. The lesion’s texture may also change, becoming less rough or starting to crust. More importantly, your wart-related foot pain should start to resolve during this period of recovery.
Final Phase of Recovery
Full wart resolution is likely to happen between 7 and 12 weeks after your first SWIFT session. (The exact healing timeline will depend on the spacing of your treatment sessions and the severity of the wart you’re treating.) You’ll know that the final stage of healing has begun when your wart lesion starts to flake away, allowing the healthy skin beneath to reappear. Still, you’ll need to return to your Smyrna podiatrist for final confirmation that the wart has resolved.
What Does SWIFT Success Look Like?
Plantar wart recovery looks different after SWIFT than it does with traditional plantar wart treatments. Results appear gradually, showing minor but consistent improvements instead of immediate and dramatic changes. Yet, as you saw above, over the typical 12-week course of treatment, you’ll know SWIFT is working because:
- Walking won’t hurt as much. Plantar warts cause pain when you walk because of the pressure you place on them. As SWIFT works on your wart, the pain improves—even if the lesion is still visible.
- Flattening occurs. The pain reduction occurs when that raised, hard wart begins flattening out.
- Normal skin appears.
- You stop worrying about plantar wart recurrence.
Even if the wart doesn’t vanish overnight, these changes indicate that your body is winning the fight against HPV.
Signs That Treatment May Have Failed
Most patients respond well to SWIFT therapy for plantar warts. (Studies show the success rate as high as 86% for patients who complete their full course of treatment.) However, you may need to add further SWIFT treatments, or seek a different resolution if you notice any of the following signs:
- If your wart hasn’t fallen off or you haven’t seen the reappearance of healthy skin after 12 weeks.
- If you see new warts appear on your foot.
- If your wart lesion bleeds or is painful.
Even if your wart doesn’t follow the typical SWIFT therapy healing process, that doesn’t mean it won’t still resolve. Remember, the treatment works by activating your immune system, and everybody works differently. So, if your wart hasn’t resolved in the typical timeline, that may mean your initial immune response simply wasn’t strong enough. As such, you may need to add more SWIFT sessions to your treatment plan. Or, you may need to consider a different therapy for your plantar wart recovery. Either way, you shouldn’t give up. With time and care, we will resolve your plantar wart and get you walking comfortably again. All you have to do is contact the office and request a plantar wart treatment consultation.
