Diseases and Conditions

Common warts

Diagnosis

In most cases, your doctor can diagnose a common wart with one or more of these techniques:

  • Examining the wart
  • Scraping off the top layer of the wart to check for signs of dark, pinpoint dots — clotted blood vessels — which are common with warts
  • Removing a small section of the wart (shave biopsy) and sending it to a laboratory for analysis to rule out other types of skin growths