Leg Vein Treatment

Understanding Leg Veins

Leg veins can be unsightly and very noticeable, limiting our wanting to wear shorts. With time, the veins can worsen, feeling heavy, achy and sore. The anatomy is clear how varicose and spider leg veins develop. Blood should return back to our heart via a vein system deep to our leg muscles. Instead, one directional valves in that deep vein system become useless and allow blood to back flow into our superficial leg veins. The added blood in our superficial leg veins, dilates and increases them in size, making them very visible on our skin surface. Over time, these superficial varicose veins become more tortuous, visible and painful. Fortunately, these superficial veins are not critical to our normal blood flow. The deep veins are the important vessels for returning blood to the heart, not these skin surface varicose and spider veins.  

In an office evaluation, Dr. Harrison can determine the likelihood of a patient having incompetent large vein valves. If so, Dr. Harrison may recommend a venous ultrasound to look for blood reflux, whereupon, he may refer that patient for vein ablation by a vascular surgeon. 

For those of us with only superficial varicose veins, then sclerotherapy is the treatment of choice. A sclerotherapy solution is injected into the visible varicose, reticular and spider leg veins, to irritate the vein walls and cause the veins to close down. Dr. Harrison may ask that you wear compression stockings for a short period after sclerotherapy to improve the result. Over weeks, the veins close down, no more blood can flow through the veins and they are no longer visible. Our varicose veins have disappeared, and we feel comfortable in shorts again.