Can cryotherapy treatments be painful?

Generally, cryotherapy is painful due to cold injury to the skin. If liquid nitrogen is used, its boiling point is minus 196 degrees Centigrade. The degree of pain is dependent on how aggressive the cryotherapy is.

However, pain may be reduced by the use of topical an anaesthetic cream (Emla) before treatment.

Dermatologists have used cryotherapy for many years and it is commonly used to treat a variety of skin conditions such as viral warts, seborrheic keratosis, sebaceous hyperplasia, haemangiomas and lentigo, and pre-malignant lesions including actinic keratosis and Bowen’s disease.

The way cryotherapy works is by freezing and thawing skin cells to cause necrosis. Treated areas are then allowed to heal.

Cryotherapy is the use of liquid nitrogen at very low temperature (-196 degrees Celcius) to treat various conditions on the skin. This is a very common treatment in any Dermatology clinic and is used daily for treatment of viral warts, age spots, pre-cancers such as actinic keratosis, or even early skin cancers affecting the top part of the skin.

It can be painful especially when used over sensitive areas such as the face, hands, feet or genitalia. Most adults are able to tolerate cryotherapy with no issues. For children, we will usually apply numbing cream before their cryotherapy treatment; this makes it manageable for a large majority of the children we see.