A Californian woman claims she got cancer after getting a cut while getting her nails done.
Grace Garcia, 50, a mother of three from San Gabriel, near Los Angeles, was diagnosed with stage 1 squamous cell carcinoma — a common type of skin cancer — in April.
It developed around a deep cut in the cuticle of her right ring finger made by a manicurist, who became infected with human papillomavirus (HPV).
Doctors cut out the cancer using a surgical technique used to remove cancerous lesions from First Lady Jill Biden earlier this week.
Grace Garcia, 50, from near Los Angeles, says she got cancer after a manicurist cut off a piece of her nail. She was eventually diagnosed with stage 1 squamous cell carcinoma
Garcia – who’s been doing her nails for over two decades – hit a ‘fancy’ new look salon just before Thanksgiving in November 2021.
But during the treatment, the manicure slipped.
“She cut me, and the cut wasn’t just a normal cuticle cut,” Garcia told Today. ‘This was one of the first times this has happened to me.’
She put antibiotic ointment on the wound when she got home, but after a few days it had barely healed.
Dona Garcia returned to the salon to complain. “I got upset and went back and told them the lady cut me and my finger is still bothering me,” she said. ‘They said, ‘oh, we fired her [after] a lot of complaints.’ That was it.’
The manicurist cut deeply into the cuticle of the right ring finger during the procedure, causing it to start bleeding. She went home and put antibiotic ointment on the cut, but a few days later it hadn’t healed. When she finally healed, she was still tender.
The cut healed over the days, but Mrs. Garcia quickly noticed a ‘bump’ that was a darker color to the rest of her skin and looked tender if it was hit against something.
She became concerned and visited her primary care doctor in April 2022, who referred her to a dermatologist – but they told her just to monitor him.
When the bump changed to look like an ‘open sore’ and a wart started to develop, she went back to the doctors, who ordered a biopsy.
It revealed that she had stage 1 skin cancer – clinically termed squamous cell carcinoma – as well as an HPV infection in the wound.
HPV can cause cancer when infections persist in sores over time, turning normal cells into cancerous ones, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
It usually occurs during sexual activity. But what made Garcia’s case unusual was that the HPV infection arose from the wound on her nail.
Shari Lipner, a dermatologist at Cornell University in New York, added to DailyMail.com: ‘Genital warts are often the culprit. [for carrying HPV].
‘It would have to be equipment that came into contact with a genital wart and was not sterilized.’
The patient’s dermatologist, Dr. Teo Soleymani of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Health added: ‘Generally speaking, strains that cause cancer from an HPV standpoint tend to be more sexually transmitted.
‘In Grace’s case, she had an injury, which became the gateway.
‘So that thick skin that we have on our hands and feet acts as a natural barrier against infections and things like that. [But for Ms Garcia] this was no longer the case, and the virus was able to infect his skin.’
Garcia was treated with Mohs surgery, a procedure that allows doctors to see 100% of the cancer and remove it without damaging the skin too much.
The cancer had not spread to other areas of the body.
Mrs. Garcia required no further treatment, but now needs to visit his dermatologist regularly for check-ups.
Doctors suggest that HPV may have entered the wound if she was having her nails done with equipment that was not previously sterilized.
There is no evidence to date that the equipment used for his treatment has not been sterilized.
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