How Genital Warts are Detected

There are a few methods by which a physician can determine whether or not you have Genital Warts and amongst them, visual inspection is the most common. Often times a doctor will only need to examine the area visually to be able to tell if you have Genital Warts. Genital Warts can be small in appearance, and sometimes invisible to the naked eye. In this case your physician will dab some acetic acid on the suspected area.

If there are warts where the acetic acid was daubed, the genital warts will show up as white patches against the skin. Just for your information, and since I know that I found this to be particularly interesting, acetic acid is vinegar. So although I wouldn’t suggest dousing yourself with vinegar to find out if you do have warts, it can’t hurt to dab a small bit using an ear bud (Q-tip).

You might however, want to stay away from using vinegar to show up any warts if they are located within your body. Other methods used to find out whether or not you have genital warts can include a pap smear. Here a small sample of the mucous membranes are taken and sent in for testing to see if there has been any abnormal cell changes occurring.

Another method used for detection genital warts is colposcopy. In this method the cervix is painted with a vinegar solution and viewed through the colposcope. If a difference in shading is detected then an small area is painted over with a special dye. From the areas which don’t take on the dye, a small sample is taken to be analyzed.

Other than the genital warts detection method using acetic acid, the other methods are geared mainly for genital warts detection in women. However, if your doctor believes that cancer might be a possibility a biopsy might be done to rule out cancer.

Although the presence of genital warts may indicate cancer being present, it doesn’t necessarily mean so. The warts can be as a result of cancer, or cancer can occur due to cell changes that the warts might induce. This is especially true in cases where the genital warts are left untreated or have gone undetected.