More than 30 million Americans suffer from a venous disease, and about one-third of them have varicose veins. If you or someone you know has varicose veins, you’re all too aware that this venous disease not only affects the appearance of your legs, producing knotty, bulging veins, but also typically results in throbbing, aching, or discomfort.
Not too long ago, the go-to treatment for varicose veins was a surgical procedure called vein stripping and ligation. Today, a variety of noninvasive vein procedures can eliminate them.
Here, our own board-certified interventional cardiac medicine specialists, Dinesh Singal, MD, FACC, FACP, FSCAI and Parthiv Amin, MD, FACC, RPVI, at Cardio Metabolic Institute provides insights on common nonsurgical treatment options for varicose veins that are available at our location in Somerset, New Jersey.
Let’s begin by explaining why healthy veins matter in the first place. Every tissue, cell, and organ in your body relies on getting nutrient-rich oxygenated blood in order to perform its particular function. Healthy, properly operating veins have a role in making that happen.
The way it plays out is that pulmonary veins carry oxygenated blood from your lungs to your heart. From there, your arteries take over delivering nutrient-rich blood throughout your body. Healthy veins elsewhere in your body then deliver oxygen-poor blood back to the heart, where it can be exchanged for oxygenated blood.
One-way valves inside the veins need to be healthy and strong so they can keep blood moving in one direction — toward the heart — and most of your veins have to work against gravity. When the valves are damaged or weakened, they can’t close properly, causing blood to leak backward and pool.
This sets up a perfect storm for increased pressure and congestion within the vein, which results in the vein bulging and twisting beneath the skin’s surface, the characteristic physical appearance of varicose veins, which are most common in your legs.
Today’s physicians can employ a variety of noninvasive or minimally invasive varicose vein treatment options that have two major benefits: They effectively treat varicose veins and typically lower the risk of complications.
Although each vein treatment works a little differently, the end result is the same — eliminating troublesome veins and restoring optimal blood flow by rerouting blood to healthy veins.
Advanced technology that taps into thermal energy also can address varicose veins. In contrast to collapsing or removing the vein, ablation treatments seal off the damaged vein. Once it’s closed off, blood gets rerouted to healthy veins.
Two popular ablation treatments are endovenous laser ablation, which uses laser energy and radiofrequency ablation, which taps into an electrical current produced by radio waves to close off the affected vein.
For the convenience of our patients, our highly skilled team offers on-site diagnostic testing for heart and vascular disease as well as on-site treatment options for varicose veins or chronic venous insufficiency.
If you are suffering from achy, throbbing legs and want to know which noninvasive or minimally invasive varicose vein treatment is right for you, contact Cardio Metabolic Institute at our Somerset location. Book your appointment online or call us today.
