Health Issues Common In Women

Winter Is Coming: It's Time To Treat Those Varicose Veins

16 November 2015 by admin

When you are suffering from varicose veins, you may find it difficult to balance wanting to rid yourself of your painful and unsightly varicose veins and worrying about how the recovery process from your treatments may affect your daily life. After all, most of the treatments for varicose veins will require you to keep your legs covered and in compression socks after the fact. As such, now that the winter season is on its way, you can start thinking seriously about your varicose vein treatment options and scheduling your appointment. Get to know more about some of your treatment options so that you can get those varicose veins taken care of.

Laser Surgery

One of the most popular treatments for varicose veins is a form of laser therapy, which is essentially a laser surgery. Laser varicose vein surgery uses high heat from light energy (which is what makes the laser) to shrink your veins and close them off. Essentially it stops blood from flowing to those varicose veins, allowing them to shrink away and disappear.

There are two types of laser varicose vein surgeries that your doctor may perform. For the smallest varicose veins (commonly referred to as spider veins), a simple laser surgery from outside the skin may be a possibility.

More commonly, a doctor will have to get the laser under the surface of the skin to directly apply heat to the varicose veins. This surgery (sometimes called an endovenous laser treatment) involves the threading of a small hollow catheter into the veins to the laser can get to the bundles of swollen, tangled varicose veins. Your doctor will numb your skin where the catheter will enter the body and will inject a numbing agent into the vein as well. This means you do not need to be under general anesthesia for the procedure and you can have your laser surgery as an outpatient procedure.

Sclerotherapy

Another treatment option for varicose veins is known as sclerotherapy. Rather than using light energy, sclerotherapy uses an injected medication or solution. Like laser therapy, this treatment does not require anesthesia.

Sclerotherapy involves injecting the solution directly into the vein. The solution closes off the vein by creating scar tissue and essentially damaging the vein. Once the varicose veins are closed off, your body re-routes the blood supply so that the scarred tissue in those varicose veins can be dissolved back into the body over time.

This is a quick and easy procedure and is done as an outpatient process. However, sclerotherapy does have limitations and is most often only used for smaller instances of varicose veins. Larger bundles of varicose veins will take other treatments.

Now that you know some of the treatments that you can use for your varicose veins this winter, you can get your appointment scheduled and get your procedure done as soon as possible. Then, next spring and summer, you can show off your legs again without worrying about your varicose veins showing.

To learn more about varicose vein surgery, contact a company like Premier Surgical Associates. 

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