Best Treatment for Spider Veins
Do you have a small web of reddish or bluish blood vessels visible under the surface of the skin? Does it make you feel uncomfortable or self-conscious? Does it make your legs feel heavy at night?
Spider veins, medically known as Telangiectasias, can cause severe pain and discomfort and is usually a source of shame and self-consciousness. In some cases, spider veins may also be indicative of a dangerous vein disease called venous insufficiency.
If you have spider veins, please consult your nearest spider vein specialist in NY or spider vein specialist in NJ.
Generally speaking, the best treatment for spider veins is sclerotherapy. However, the best treatment for spider veins on face is laser therapy.
In this article, we give you an overview of the best treatment for spider veins.
Why Treating Spider Veins is Necessary
There’s a common misconception that treating spider veins is not necessary. However, that isn’t true for a number of reasons.
Self-Consciousness
Spider veins look like red or blue spider webs or the legs of thin spiders crawling across your skin. They only grow outward and expand over time.
Initially, you may hide them under layers of clothes. But pretty soon, you won’t be able to hide them anymore.
This leads to crippling social anxiety and self-consciousness and prevents you from engaging in simple social rituals like going to parties or to the beach.
Pain and Discomfort
Initially, spider veins may just be an inconvenience — a dull throbbing in your veins, a slight heaviness in your legs.
Over time, however, spider veins can cause immense pain and discomfort. You won’t be able to sit or walk comfortably and you’ll feel exhausted at the end of the day.
Chronic Venous Insufficiency
Finally, spider veins may be indicative of a dangerous underlying vein disease.
Chronic Venous Insufficiency is a medical condition in which the valves in the veins malfunction. As a result of that, blood pools in your legs instead of flowing to your heart. The accumulation of blood in the veins leads to spider veins and varicose veins.
If left untreated, spider veins with venous insufficiency can have the following consequences:
- You may develop bulging varicose veins.
- Minor scratches can cause profuse bleeding.
- Skin infections and non-healing wounds on legs.
- Discoloration of skin due to restricted blood circulation.
- In rare worst-case scenarios, venous insufficiency can lead to deep vein thrombosis. This is a serious medical condition in which the accumulated blood clots in your veins. If these clots break away, they may travel to your lungs, leading to a potentially lethal condition called pulmonary embolism.
If you have spider veins, it’s important to go to a reputable vein treatment clinic and get tested for venous insufficiency. If left untreated, vein disease can be extremely harmful.
Best Treatment for Spider Veins on Legs: Sclerotherapy
Sclerotherapy is currently the best treatment for spider veins.
During this procedure, a medicine called sclerosant is injected into the spider veins. The medicine fuses the walls of the veins together, sealing them shut. The accumulated blood reroutes to healthier veins and the sealed affected veins get reabsorbed into the body.
Advantages of Sclerotherapy
- Non-surgical in nature.
- Minimally-invasive with a single point of entry.
- Concludes within 30 minutes.
- Causes minimal pain and discomfort.
- Works immediately.
- Can be performed on an outpatient basis and you may resume your daily activities immediately.
Drawbacks of Sclerotherapy
The only drawback of sclerotherapy is that it’s not suitable for spider veins on the feet or face.
The face and feet are dense with venous-arterial connections. Accidentally injecting sclerosant into the arteries (instead of the veins) can be dangerous, so most reputable vein doctors won’t use sclerotherapy for spider veins on the face or feet.
Best Treatment for Spider Veins on Face: Laser Therapy
Laser Therapy (also known as Blue Light Therapy) is the best treatment for spider veins on face.
During this procedure, a non-UV laser heats up the regions of the skin with the spider veins. The heat can damage the blood vessels and cause them to shrink and dissolve over time.
Advantages of Laser Treatment
It can be used as a treatment for spider veins on face or feet because it doesn’t run the risk of damaging the arteries. That’s the only time laser treatment is recommended for spider veins.
Drawbacks of Laser Treatment
- Extremely ineffective and you don’t see the results for months.
- You have to go for multiple sessions over several weeks and months.
- Over time, laser treatment is far more expensive than sclerotherapy.
- It’s not performed by vein doctors and isn’t preceded by a test for vein disease. As such, if the spider veins are caused by vein disease, they’ll simply come back because laser treatment doesn’t address the root cause.
What is the Best Treatment for Spider Veins with Chronic Venous Insufficiency?
Before treating spider veins, it’s necessary to consult a board-certified expert vein specialist.
The vein specialist will run a test called doppler ultrasound to determine the root cause of spider veins. If the spider veins are normal (not caused by vein disease), then sclerotherapy is the best treatment option.
However, if they detect an underlying vein disease, then sclerotherapy won’t be enough.
In that case, you will have to seek minimally-invasive vein disease treatments like radiofrequency ablation, venaseal, or endovenous laser ablation.
Like sclerotherapy, all of these treatments are also minimally-invasive, cause minimal pain or discomfort, carry negligible risk, conclude within an hour, and can be performed on an outpatient basis.
If you treat spider veins without addressing the underlying vein disease, they’ll simply come back again.
What is the Best Treatment for Spider Veins for Me?
At VIP Medical Group, our Ivy League board-certified vein doctors carefully study your condition, discuss your medical history, and test for venous insufficiency. Once they have all the necessary information, they come up with a permanent treatment plan that’s specific to your needs.
If you have any questions or concerns, schedule an appointment with your local vein treatment clinic.