Background : Warts represent a common therapeutic challenge as no therapeutic modality is considered as uniformly effective or viricidal. Success rates have been highly reported with electrosurgery and CO2 laser vaporization has been also reported as an effective, safe and simple therapeutic approach for treatment of warts.Aim of work : The aim of this study was to compare CO2 laser treatment (using two different powers; 1 watt and 3 watts) with that of electrosurgery (6 watts) in treatment of common warts as regards; efficacy, complications, and healing.Patients and methods : Thirty five patients with at least three verrucae vulgaris were involved in this prospective double blinded clinical trial. Two lesions were treated by the two different powers of CO2 laser (continuous mode), while the third one was treated by electrodesiccation in the same setting. Evaluation was done at week 1, week 4 and at week 12. The effect of the number of passes of both powers of CO2 laser was also evaluated.Results : There was no significant difference between CO2 laser and electrodessication neither as regards re-epithelialization, development of erythema, post inflammatory hyperpigmentation nor scar formation. However, secondary infection was significantly higher in patients treated with electrodesiccation in comparison to those treated with CO2 laser both at week 1 (P=0.039) and at week 4 follow up (P=0.042). On the other hand, the incidence of recurrence of the warts was significantly higher in CO2 laser treated lesions (P=0.020) than in lesions treated by electrodesiccation at week 4 follow up.Among the CO2 laser treated lesions at week 4 follow up, earlier healing (re-epithelialization) of the lesions was significantly achieved in the 1 watt treated lesions more than in the 3 watts treated lesions (P=0.041). However, recurrence was significantly higher in lesions treated by 1 watt when compared to those treated by 3 watts (P=0.022). Using larger number of CO2 passes than the median was significantly correlated with a higher incidence of lesional post inflammatory hyperpigmentation (P=0.008).Conclusion : The use of low power output of (3 watts) CO2 shows high cure rates but very low powers has lower cure rates and significantly higher recurrence. Both electrodessication and CO2 are effective and relatively safe lines of treatment for warts. However, electrodessication shows higher cure rates and less recurrence. CO2 shows lower incidence of secondary infection with less morbidity during healing of lesions. We believe that electrodesiccation still represents the first line of treatment of cutaneous warts. CO2 may be the proper choice in patients with high risk of bacterial infection.