Does Laser Work for Treating Onychomycosis? Maybe, Sometimes

Two new studies examine different laser approaches to treating onychomycotic nails.

Hollmig and colleagues enrolled 27 patients with a total of 125 nails needing treatment to evaluate the effectiveness of 1064-nm Nd:YAG laser for mycologic cure and clinical improvement (defined as proximal nail-plate clearance). Patients randomized to treatment received two laser treatments, 2 weeks apart. Among the 22 study completers, treatment recipients and untreated control patients had no statistically significant differences in mycologic cure (33% and 20%, respectively) or nail-plate clearance (mean, 0.44 mm and 0.15 mm, respectively).

In another recent trial, Lim and colleagues used fractional CO₂ laser to treat onychomycotic nails in 24 patients who …