Spider veins can be a pain. Either because they’re causing real pain, or because they stop you from feeling your most confident when your legs are showing. So many women are hiding their beautiful legs under leggings, tights, and hose because they don’t think anything can be done about the network of reticular and telangiectatic veins on their legs. Let me assure you, we can treat those veins!
Spider veins respond incredibly well to injection sclerotherapy. This treatment is the injection of a medicine into the spider vein which causes the inside lining of the vein wall to get irritated and collapse shut. Once the sides of the wall are stuck together, it eventually scars and fibroses down so that blood can no longer flow through it. The goal is to keep the vein walls clamped down, so I have patients wear compression stockings for two weeks after treatment to ensure added pressure along the vein walls to keep it shut. The vein that was once purple, blue or red gradually starts to fade away over a number of months.
You can return to almost all of your normal activities after a day. The only things I really don’t want patients doing is going in hot tubs or saunas for two weeks as this can encourage the vein wall to open up again.
Spider veins may take a few treatments before the entire network of veins has been treated adequately for them to fibrose and fade. No one can predict how your veins will respond to sclerotherapy and it can take anywhere from one to six treatments for the veins to clear or show improvement. The average number of treatments is three to four. An individual vein may take one to three injections before it fully closes and disappears.
Sclerotherapy will fade and clear those veins that are visible at the time of treatment, but some veins may develop and appear after treatment which is why many people have an annual touch-up to address any new spider veins that have arisen.
If you would like to have your spider veins treated and free your legs from the tyranny of your pants, leggings, and hosiery, please call 651-797-6880 for an appointment.