subject: Plant Medicine and CO2 Laser Therapy for Warts [print this page] Plant Medicine and CO2 Laser Therapy for Warts
Genital wart is caused by HPV-2 and very common in sexually active adults. Most infections do not result in the manifestation of genital warts. The annual incidence of genital warts is 1%-2% of the sexually active population. Genital warts are almost always spread by sexual contact but vertical transmission and autoinoculation do occur rarely. Genital warts are not themselves cancerous, but warts caused by high risk types of HPV are predisposed to oncogenic transformation. All female patients with anogenital warts should be considered at risk for cervical, vaginal, and vulvar dysplasia, which can lead to cancer and death.
There are many different treatment methods for genital warts. The CO2 laser utilizes focused infrared light energy to vaporize affected tissues. It permits precise tissue ablation by spatial confinement of thermal damage and effective vaporization, which promotes rapid healing without scar formation in most cases. CO2 laser therapy is a useful treatment modality, especially for extensive warts. The principal advantages of CO2 laser therapy are precision (which results in sparing of normal tissue), probable elimination of the infective agent, and relatively good cosmetic result. Carbon dioxide laser can be used to treat extensive and thick warts quickly and without the drawing of blood.
The carbon dioxide laser is able to effect such wart clearance in part because of deeper penetration than generally occurs with cryotherapy. The CO2 laser is best used at power settings of 2-10 Watts because it vaporizes tissue with a shallow depth of penetration at those settings. However, laser treatment is more complex and costly than electrosurgery or cryotherapy. A CO2 laser costs $5,000-50,000 and requires maintenance and additional training to perform correctly. CO2 laser therapy is typically an office procedure. However, larger lesions and pediatric patients may require anesthesia and therefore can be done in the hospital under general anesthesia.
Determining the best treatment for genital warts takes into account efficacy, needs, preferences, financial resources and convenience to the patient. In recent years, natural herbs for genital warts are emphasized again. Plant medicines flourish in the international market; they not only enjoy great popularity in traditional medicine countries, such as China, India, Korea, Japan and so on, but also are recognized and applied in European and American countries, such as America, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland and so on. The world's pharmaceutical market has a huge demand for Chinese medicine and types of natural drugs are growing with the speed of 7%-10% each year.
Data displays that the increment speed of plant medicine market all over the world is apparently higher than that of world pharmaceutical market, of which the United States is up to 20%-50%. In other countries and areas, such as Korea, its main exporting products is ginseng with rapid export growth in recent years. The plant medicine market in Middle East and Africa also develops quickly and the increment speed of Africa is about 12%. Europe plays a vital role in the world plant medicine market with the use of plant medicine for several hundred years. Although it is increasingly popular in U.S. consumers with rapid sales growth, there is still considerable scope for its market to develop.
Many major drug companies are interested in plant medicine market. Consumers are more willing to accept cheaper alternatives to prescription drugs which have fewer side effects. An estimated, 5,000 million people in the United States don't have health insurance. These people try to avoid doctors and solve health problems by themselves. Social and economic composite factors make them turn to natural alternative medicine. This trend also gets some official support; for example, in Washington, insurance companies must bear the medical expenses that people consume in registered alternative medicine physician such as homoeopath and acupuncturist.
Natural drugs are made from natural materials, widely available with natural chemical compositions and smooth function. Their effectiveness is integral and bidirectional with little side effects; it is not easy to cause pathogenic microorganism to develop drug resistance; harmful residues seldom remain in animal body; and so on. Plant medicines play a dominant role in natural drugs. For recent years, plant medicines are considered to be very important because of the unique advantage in the treatment. To learn more, please go to http://www.naturespharma.org.
