During our toasty Midwest summers, shorts and skirts are the clothing of choice, not to mention swimsuits. But no one wants to show off their legs when they have little purple and blue squiggly lines coursing about on their skin.
Spider veins. Ugh.
Now that we’re watching the tulips and daffodils poking through the formerly frozen garden, this is a great time to do something about your spider veins at Musick Dermatology. That way your legs will look great come summer and swimsuit season. Dr. Musick uses mainly sclerotherapy for spider veins, but sometimes may use endovenous laser ablation for larger veins.
What causes spider veins?
Veins are the highways for the blood to return to the heart. And sometimes they have a real fight with gravity. This is especially true in the legs, where the blood needs to go directly up the leg. As we age, the strength of the support tissues and even of the veins themselves can diminish. This can cause the blood to back up and pool in spots. This shows itself in spider and varicose veins. Because spider veins are just below the surface of the skin, they are very visible.
How does Dr. Musick get rid of them?
Sclerotherapy is nothing new. It was first used in the 1930s to make unwanted veins close up and go away. In sclerotherapy, Dr. Musick injects a special saline solution directly into the vein in question. This solution irritates the vein and causes the walls to collapse and the vein to close off. Over the next two to three months, the body gradually absorbs the unused vein, making it disappear or become dramatically less visible. Any blood that ran through the vein is routed to an adjacent vein.
When using laser therapy, a laser fiber is inserted into the larger vein in question. The laser energy causes the vein wall to collapse in the same way that sclerotherapy does, and this close off the vein. Generally, laser ablation is only necessary for larger spider veins.
What happens afterward?
After your treatment, we put you in compression stockings that you’ll wear for two weeks during your waking hours. This compression improves your results, so most veins need only one treatment session to go away.
March is a great time to come see us at our beautiful offices on Benchmark Centre Drive in Swansea and have us get rid of those obnoxious spider veins. Give us a call at (618) 628-2588 to schedule your appointment.