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| Sclerotherapy Injections |
Additional Reading:
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Traditionally, veins have been injected using a poison (called a "sclerosant") to kill the vein wall. This has been a very popular treatment in many countries and comes and goes in popularity.
Traditionally liquid sclerosant is used. Unfortunately this not only kills the vein wall, but also kills the blood cells causing clots in the veins themselves. To try and reduce the amount of blood in the veins and therefore clot formed by the sclerosant, several techniques are used. The leg can be elevated or tight bindings can be placed around the legs before the sclerosant is injected into the veins. Other techniques include injecting air, large volumes of the fluids to push the blood out of the way or, more recently, making the poison (or sclerosant) into a foam, like shaving foam.
Although there is a place for foam sclerotherapy in some smaller or winding veins and a place for liquid sclerotherapy in thread vein, treatment of major varicose veins with foam sclerotherapy or liquid therapy is very much a second rate solution compared to some of the new thermo-ablation techniques that are now available and will be described in this website.
Basically, veins smaller than 3 mm in diameter can be treated very well by sclerotherapy, particularly foam sclerotherapy. Those at about 4 mm and 5 mm diameter have poorer long term results and those larger than 5 mm in diameter tend to have very poor medium to long term results.
With new ultrasound techniques, new techniques of giving foam and compressing the veins afterwards, there certainly is a place for sclerotherapy in the treatment of varicose veins but this has to be mixed with the other techniques available for the bigger veins and venous trunks to ensure the best results.
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