Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor, 
With sincere regrets I read about the lady who lost her leg due to pedicure (India Journal November 21, 2014). Ladies, do not take pedicure lightly. You can get fungal infections, bacterial infections, septicemia (blood poisoning), hepatitis B, hepatitis C, HIV. Many nail salons do not sterilize their instruments. Yet these instruments penetrate your tissues. Pedicurists are not board-certified surgeons. Why do surgeons scrub for 15 minutes before any surgery? Please do not risk your lives for good-looking nails. The jets in the whirlpool bath can harbor bacteria and fungi. These whirlpool baths require a minimum of 10 minutes of sanitization. You can ask your spa how they clean and disinfect. Ask them whether they autoclave all their instruments. Be the first client at the spa. You can buy you set of instruments for your personal use and even an autoclave (Amazon.com), which looks like a pressure cooker. . You have to make sure that your instruments are sterilized. An autoclave can sterilize instruments in about 16 minutes. The second choice is to completely submerge the instruments in state approved disinfectants for 24 hours. The best choice is to trim your nails yourselves and use nail polish and stay healthy and live a long life.

Sincerely, R.Prasad, MD,FRCPC, Lakewood,CA.