Suffering from Varicose Veins? Consider These Treatment Options
Varicose veins may cause you a lot of physical and mental distress. Apart from causing embarrassment about unsightly marks, they can become quite painful. On a positive note, varicose veins can be treated successfully. The following are treatment options your doctor may recommend.
Lifestyle changes
This is the first treatment for varicose veins disorder. By observing some daily activities, you can be able to relieve pain and prevent other varicose veins from forming. They include:
- Engaging in physical exercises to tone up your muscles and enhance leg movement; this will improve blood flow to the legs.
- Avoid standing or seating for long periods without a break and choose better seating postures like not crossing your legs while seating will also assist.
- You have to lose weight considerably if you are overweight or obese to improve blood flow within the body and reduce the pressure on the veins.
- Avoiding tight clothes and wearing of high heels for extended periods.
- Wearing compression stockings might as well help squeeze the legs and improve blood flow to the leg muscles.
Medical Procedures
Your doctor may suggest a suitable therapeutic option which will be used to close or remove the varicose veins. Some of these procedures include:
Sclerotherapy—Here, your doctor will inject a chemical solution into your veins that will scar and close them. The treated veins will fade in a few weeks. The process is less painful, and it doesn't require anaesthesia and can be performed in your doctor's office.
Laser surgery—the procedure can be performed by a vascular surgeon who will use a laser beam to treat mainly the smaller varicose veins. The laser light is shone through the varicose veins and will make them fade, without necessarily doing any cuts or use of any chemicals.
Ambulatory phlebotomy—This will include the making of small cuttings or incisions to remove the varicose veins, usually the ones closest to the surface of the skin. The area around the affected veins will be numbed, and you can be awake during the procedure.
Vein stripping and ligation—Here, a vein is tied off before it joins a deep vein then removed through incisions. It can be an outpatient process that will not affect blood circulation as the deeper veins always take care of flow of large volumes of blood.
Endoscopic vein surgery—Where the varicose veins are causing skin sores or ulcers, this process will be applied. The surgeon will cut near the varicose vein, then use a tiny camera at the end of a thin tube to move through the vein and close it using a surgical device.