Dealing With Spider Veins

Though generally not painful, there may be no more unsightly condition than spider veins. Solutions can range from invasive procedures such as surgical ligation and electrodessication, to milder techniques like laser therapy and scelerotherapy. If you are like 40% of the American population in having spider veins—solutions are possible. You just have to know which one is right for you.

Of all the spider vein solutions that science has to offer by far the pre-eminent technique used nowadays is sclerotherapy. This method injects a scelerosing solution into the veins and collapses them until they become scar tissue and become absorbed into the bloodstream. Each individual treatment usually takes about 15-45 minutes and each spider vein generally needs about 1-3 treatments for total completion. And even though a foreign solution is injected into the spider vein, the solution is so mild and the needle is so small, scarring and post-treatment pain are extremely rare.

Sclerotherapy as a spider vein procedure has been used in Europe safely for close to 50 years but only in the last 20 years has it been used in this country. But in that decade it has built an astounding reputation. Patients using sclerotherapy as a solution for spider veins report a 50%-90% improvement in this condition that afflicts more than half of the adult female population.

When it comes to spider veins on the face, (and it does happen), other procedures may prove more effective than sclerotherapy as a spider vein solution. Laser therapy and intense pulsed light therapy, which uses heat from a high-intensity laser beam to destroy abnormal veins, has proven successful as a solution for spider veins on the face---although whether that same success can be found on the lower extremities is still up for debate.

For stubborn veins that prove resistant to such procedures, techniques like surgical ligation or electrodessication can be used. It should be noted that these are much more significant surgical procedures and are usually reserved for varicose veins which are more difficult to remove than spider veins. Sclerotherapy is still the technique of choice used by most dermatological surgeons and might just you give you the spider vein solution that you’ve been looking for. If you’d like more information on sclerotherapy or any other New Jersey spider vein treatment, contact Pistone Cosmetic Dermatology Associates.