Many people consider varicose veins to be a cosmetic problem. Spider veins or protruding veins make your legs look unsightly, but they also warn of more serious health problems. Recognizing the signs of varicose veins in time, carrying out treatment and preventing recurrence is the main task for those who want to maintain health and preserve the beauty of their legs for as long as possible.
What are varicose veins?
Answering this question, many will say that the main sign of varicose veins is unsightly, protruding veins. This happens due to the fact that the vein wall expands, stretches, and the vessel loses its tone. Indeed, dilated veins are the main manifestation of varicose veins, but why does this happen?
Blood flows through the veins from the bottom up. In this case, the leg muscles play the role of a kind of pump: by contracting, they "lift" blood through the veins to the heart. But if during the day you mostly sit and move little, then the muscles contract badly, and the mechanism that helps blood rise through the veins fails. Blood in the vessels stagnates, which creates a prerequisite for the development of varicose veins.
The second important mechanism that ensures normal blood flow through the leg veins is the presence of valves in the vein walls. Normally, they close and prevent blood from flowing from top to bottom. If the valve is weak, reflux occurs - backflow of blood. As a result, it stagnates and stretches the vessel. Loss of tone, vein walls expand, and vessels can no longer perform their functions 100%. This condition is called varicose veins.
Therefore, varicose veins are the result of the weakness of the venous valve, which begins to allow blood to flow in the opposite direction, which leads to its stagnation. Varicose veins most often affect the superficial veins of the legs. The affected vein is clearly visible under the skin and appears knotted and tortuous.
What factors influence the formation of varicose veins?
Risk factors that affect the development of varicose veins can be divided into several groups:
- Long-term load on the vascular wall - this can be a boring load (forced to sit or stand during the day), as well as a high load associated with lifting weights (for example, among athletes).
- Hormonal imbalance that affects the condition of the venous valves. That is why varicose veins often accompany pregnancy, and teenagers and young people who are actively undergoing hormonal changes are also at risk. Varicose veins also threaten women who take hormonal contraceptives.
- Ancestry. Vascular walls include structural proteins called collagen and elastin. Their ratio ensures the elasticity of the veins. A person may have a congenital disorder in this protein ratio, which leads to weakness of the vein wall. This determines the congenital tendency to varicose veins.
Pay attention to the following: the presence of varicose veins in close relatives, the presence or absence of hormonal fluctuations (taking contraceptives and other hormonal drugs, pregnancy, breastfeeding), sufficient level of physical activity during the day.
Why are varicose veins dangerous?
In the absence of timely diagnosis and proper treatment, varicose veins at a later stage can lead to the development of severe complications such as:
- rupture of a dilated vein followed by massive bleeding;
- phlebitis - inflammation of vessel walls;
- thrombophlebitis - an inflammatory process of the vascular wall with the formation of a blood clot (thrombus) on its inner surface;
- thrombosis - blocking the lumen of the vein with a blood clot, which affects blood flow;
- thromboembolism - a condition in which a blood clot breaks from the site of its formation and is transported with the circulating blood to other structures of the body, blocking smaller vessels and causing ischemia;
- Trophic ulcers are long-term wounds that do not heal on the skin of the feet, as a result of impaired blood circulation and tissue trophism.
Many complications are difficult to treat, significantly reduce a person's quality of life and can lead to irreversible consequences.
Varicose veins: what to look for
So, varicose veins are one of the most common vascular pathologies. Many of us, especially office workers, are at risk. To understand whether it is time for you to see a phlebologist, answer a few questions:
- Are your feet swollen at the end of the day? Do you feel heavy, sick, or do you experience leg cramps at night?
- How much time during the day do you spend in the same position - sitting or standing?
- Do your relatives have varicose veins?
- Are spider veins and tortuous red capillaries appearing on your legs?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, we advise you to visit a doctor. In a specialized medical center that treats varicose veins, you can undergo ultrasound diagnostics (it takes about 20 minutes), which will identify varicose veins, if any, or allow you to assess the risk of their development. A phlebologist will provide recommendations on effective prevention or treatment.
What to do if varicose veins appear
After the phlebologist has diagnosed varicose veins, he chooses treatment tactics taking into account the stage of the disease and the severity of clinical symptoms. Therapeutic measures can combine conservative, medical and surgical techniques.
As part of conservative therapy, the following are prescribed:
- dietary nutrition to improve blood rheological properties, strengthen vascular walls, prevent edema, normalize digestive processes, reduce body weight (if necessary);
- wear compression garments of a specific compression class (stockings, stockings or tights).
Also, as part of a comprehensive treatment, the doctor may recommend external drugs to eliminate the signs of the disease. They are available in the form of ointments, gels, creams and are divided into three large groups:
- phlebotonics (venotonics) - improve the tone of the walls of blood vessels, as a result of which the dilated veins return to their original state;
- heparin - reduces blood viscosity, reduces the risk of blood clots, increases blood flow;
- anti-inflammatory - helps relieve inflammation and pain.
The basis of drug therapy is phlebotropic drugs. Such substances increase the outflow of lymphatic fluid, blood microcirculation, reduce the permeability of vascular walls, and increase their tone.
The gold standard for treating varicose veins is non-surgical methods. They make it possible to stop the development of the pathological process, block the blood flow in the damaged veins, eliminate the unpleasant symptoms of the disease, and also restore the aesthetics of the legs without scars and long-term recovery.
The modern phlebology center uses all modern treatment methods:
- Sclerotherapy. A modern procedure to remove varicose veins by injecting them with a special substance - sclerosant. With the help of such drugs, the dilated vessels are "glued together" and then turned off from the general blood flow, and blood begins to circulate through healthy veins.
- Laser and radiofrequency vein removal. Both methods are similar; they are based on thermal damage to the vein wall, as a result of which it "seals", turns into a scar, and then resolves. The procedures are a complete alternative to classic operations and are performed under ultrasound guidance. This makes it possible to act only on pathological lesions without damaging healthy tissue.
- In cases where surgery is required, the clinic performs gentle and minimally invasive operations: phlebectomy, miniphlebectomy, stripping, crossectomy. It can be used almost always, even in difficult cases.
Often a combined approach is used in the treatment of varicose veins. For example, large dilated veins are shut off from blood flow using radiofrequency and laser treatments, and smaller shallow vessels with tributaries are shut off through sclerotherapy. In this case, conservative therapy is carried out simultaneously.