Almost 25% of women have vein problems. For men, it plays at around 15%. Varicose veins become more common in people who have a background of having such vein problem. Other factor may include old age, pregnancy, obesity, a leg injury, hormonal changes and doing jobs that requires prolonged standing.
Varicose veins are usually found on the legs, although they can be found in other places, can be dark purple or blue in color. These veins may have an appearance of twisted, bulging cords raised on the leg that can be seen superficially. This is due to faulty valves and weakened walls of veins.
Normally, veins have valves to keep the Blood flow against gravity up straight to the heart and to prevent it from flowing backward. But when these valves fail to function properly, the blood pools, pressure builds up, and the veins become weak, enlarged and twisted.
Some symptoms of varicose veins includes, aching or heavy legs which often worst at night or after exercise, prominent or bulging veins on the affected leg, dark purple or blue discoloration on the affected veins, ankle swelling specially in the evening and some minor redness or dryness of areas of the skin because of waste products building up in the leg.
Varicose veins can be prevented by with some precautions. Regular exercise is very important, this will help the circulation smoothly and it strengthens the body. Avoid crossing your legs while sitting and elevating the legs regularly when standing in a long period of time. Diet modification like cutting sodium intake and increasing food that are high in fibers is very important, thus sodium is known to cause swelling and cause water retention. Wearing support stockings and by avoiding tight stocking that may impede veins that may cause poor blood circulation.
There are plenty of available treatments and surgical procedures to get rid of varicose veins. Treatment will depend on the extent of the injury; however preventing it from getting worst is the best way still. By assessing the problem a Doctor can decide whether to what procedure the person needs to undertake. Treatments are classified into two, the non-surgical and surgical.
Non-surgical treatment includes schlerotherapy and Endovenous thermal ablation. Schlerotherapy is by injecting a medicine into the veins to make it shrink. The medicines that are commonly used as sclerosants are polidocanol (POL), sodium tetradecyl sulphate (STS), Sclerodex (Canada), Hypertonic Saline, Glycerin and Chromated Glycerin. STS and Polidocanol(branded Asclera in the United States) liquids can be mixed with air or CO2 or O2 to create foams. Endovenous thermal ablation is done by comparative procedure of junction ligation and vein. This procedure appears to be more effective in the short term, and atleast effective in the overall.
Several techniques have been performed for over a century, from the more invasive saphenous stripping, to less invasive procedures like ambulatory phlebectomy, and Cryosurgery. Invasive saphenous stripping consists of removal of all or part the saphenous vein main trunk. This procedure has some complication including Deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and due to surgical cut patient is at risk of infection. Ambulatory phlebectomy is the removal of the varicose veins through small 2–3 mm incisions in the skin overlying the veins. The procedure may be performed in hospital or outpatient settings. The procedure may be performed with tumescent local anesthesia, such as with lidocaine. On the other hand cryosurgery is when a cryoprobe is passed down the long saphenous vein following saphenofemoral ligation. Then the probe is cooled with NO2 or CO2 to a temperature of -850. The vein freezes to the probe and can be retrogradely stripped after 5 sec of freezing. It is a variant of Stripping. The only point of this technique is to avoid a distal incision to remove the stripper.
Even after treatment, these veins can return, but these therapies have a high success rate. Most likely, compression support stockings will need to be worn throughout the day to help prevent the veins from coming back.