treatment of warts in children with focus on recalcitrant warts: a narrative review

Context: warts are benign cutaneous and mucosal growths caused by human papillomavirus. warts are the most common skin diseases seen by pediatric dermatologists. warts are often selflimited, especially in children, but some lesions are not resolved despite repeated treatments and referred to as recalcitrant warts. evidence acquisition: electronic databases such as google scholar, pubmed, and scopus were searched during 2000-2018 and a review was conducted for articles published in english on pediatric warts by focusing on recalcitrant warts. results: if warts are asymptomatic and being in a location that causes no cosmetic or other problems, observation is the ideal management course. most parents and children prefer treatment for their warts. there are three modalities of treatment: medical, surgical, and immunotherapy. conclusions: treatment of warts is a therapeutic challenge that depends on the patient’s age and the type of warts. despite treatment according to evidence-based guidelines, a significant proportion of warts are failed to respond. this condition is an unsolved problem in practice. the management for treating these lesions has remained unclear and a wide range of the second line of treatments has been developed.