I am a 27 female who recently exchanged oral with a male who is concerned he may be a carrier for the HPV virus. His long term monogamous partner of 5+ years was diagnosed with HPV 8 months ago and had a growth removed. He was unaware that HPV could be transmitted through oral or we would not have made this mistake. I have not had any symptoms.

What are the chances of getting HPV from one encounter? What are the odds that I will end up getting warts?

 How soon after contracting HPV would it be before I could risk transferring it to another partner? Is it only able to be transferred when there are warts?

How soon should I see a doctor? (This encounter took place 5 days ago) 

Should I abstain from all sexual activity until I'm able to get tested? I also read that condoms don't help much with prevention of spreading HPV, is this true? 

Thank you so much for your help easing my fears,

First and directly to your main question:  you are at little or no risk of catching HPV from this event. HPV oral infections are much less common than genital, and few genital HPV infections are acquired by oral sex.

Beyond that, your quesiton suggests you may not understand some basic information about HPV. Virtually all sexually active persons are infected, most of us more than once (often several times), That your partenr know he had a past partner with HPV doesn't make him any more risky than someone without that knowledge. In other words, HPV is no more common in the partners of persons with diagnosed infection than anyone else. Likewise, you can safely assume you have been infected, assuming you've had a few sex partners, and could well be carrying an active infection now. HPV DNA is detectable in the genital area in about 50% of both men and women your age. Looked at from your partner's perspective, he may be at greater risk for a new oral HPV infection from the contact described than you are from him. 

Condom efficacy against HPV can be confusing. A properly used condom clearly reduces the risk of transmitting or catching HPV for any single exposure, maybe around 70-80% effective. But 70-80% isn't much good over the long run:  with a 20-30% failure rate, after several exposures, transmission is very likely. People who say they used condoms correctly 100% of the time and never had a known condom failure have pretty much the same frequency of HPV as condom non-users.

The only HPV testing anyone ever should have is that women need regular pap smear, which nowadays pretty much always includes HPV testing. (Even then, a negative HPV test doesn't prove HPV is absent. The current testing techology misses many infections. If postive for HPV, the result is reliable, but negative results are not.

Bottom lines:  Little or no risk from the event described; no need for testing for HPV; and follow standard advice about pap smears as recomended by your doctor. Finally, consider HPV immunization, assuming you haven't already been vaccinated. It's a borderline situation for you:  the vaccine is recommended for all people up to age 26, but only for some people age 27-45. Depending on your sexual lifestyle -- that is, if you're likely to be having non-monogamous sexual exposures with more than one partner in the next few years, it may be reasonable; discuss with your doctor. The vaccine provides 100% protection against the 9 HPY types that cause around 90% of genital cancers and warts (not counting any of those types someone already has had).

You also may wish to share this with your recent partner. It sounds like he may have inacurrate knowledge himself. In particular, people normally should not tell partners about past HPV exposures if they were not documented to be infected themselves.

I hope this information is helpful. Let me know if anything isn't clear.

HHH, MD