What Is Venous Disease (And What Can I Do About It)?

Venous disease refers to any condition that negatively affects the health and function of your veins. Veins are blood vessels that carry blood to your heart. 

With age, trauma, or due to a medical condition, your veins may weaken. More than 30 million women and men in the United States have some sort of venous disease that may manifest as:

• Blood clots in arms, legs, or organs (including the brain)
• Deep venous thrombosis (a clot in a deep vein)
• Superficial thrombophlebitis (a clot near the surface of the skin)
• Chronic venous insufficiency
• Varicose veins
• Spider veins
• Venous ulcers (open sores on legs and feet due to poor circulation)
• Arteriovenous fistulas (abnormal connections between veins and arteries)

Jon-Cecil (JC) Walkes, MD is our vein expert at Texas Heart and Vein Multispecialty Group. If you have damaged or dysfunctional veins, he and our team help you decide how to resolve or treat them at our offices in Greater Heights, Pearland Market, and throughout the Houston, Texas, area.

Are you worried about your venous disease diagnosis? Here’s what you should know.

What to do about blood clots

Blood clots are jelly-like blobs of blood that form in your blood vessels. Sometimes a blood clot is a positive response to trauma, because, in this case, it helps to seal a broken blood vessel,  stop bleeding, and start healing.

However, if blood clots develop for reasons unrelated to trauma, they can be life-threatening. Sometimes blood clots form because you’re too sedentary and your blood doesn’t circulate the way it should, leading it to slow down and form clots.

Blood clots that form in your legs or arms are known as deep vein thrombosis. These clots may cause leg symptoms such as:

• Swelling
• Pain
• Skin-color changes

Abnormal blood clots, including those in the legs or arms, can dislodge from the vessel and travel through your circulatory system to your heart, lungs, or brain. Clots in your heart could cause a heart attack; a clot in your brain could cause a stroke.

If you have blood clots, or have a tendency to develop them, you may need medications to keep you safe. Blood thinners can prevent a clot from becoming larger. We can break up any clots you currently have with thrombolytic medications.

In addition, if the clot is large enough to be potentially dangerous, we may remove it or break it up through surgical intervention. You might also benefit from treatment with an intermittent pneumatic compression (IPC) device, which squeezes your legs intermittently to help blood flow more freely.

What to do about varicose veins

You may think that varicose veins are just unsightly, but in reality they’re also dysfunctional. The valves that are supposed to push blood forward to the heart are so weak that the blood pools backward, causing the veins to bulge and twist. 

While varicose veins sound gruesome, the good news is that you don’t need them. In fact, by allowing varicose veins to remain in place, you may actually be slowing down your blood’s circulation.

If you don’t want to remove varicose veins, you may be able to control any itching or swelling they cause by wearing compression stockings, which encourage blood flow. You might also benefit from losing excess weight, improving your diet, and becoming more active.

However, it’s easy to remove varicose veins permanently with state-of-the art treatments, such as:

VenaSeal™

VenaSeal is a type of medical adhesive (i.e., glue) that closes unhealthy varicose veins. When faulty veins are blocked, your blood is forced into healthy veins, which improves your circulation. Over time, the blocked veins dissolve.  

Varithena®

Sclerotherapy (injecting an irritant into a diseased vein) is the gold standard for varicose vein treatment. Varithena is the most cutting-edge example of sclerotherapy. Instead of traditional saline, however, Varithena uses a foam that destroys faulty veins to improve your circulation.

Radiofrequency ablation

We can also remove your varicose veins with radiofrequency ablation. We insert a thin, heated catheter into the diseased vein to shrink and close it. Your blood immediately reroutes itself to nearby healthy veins. 

What to do about spider veins

Spider veins are similar to varicose veins, although they’re much smaller and don’t bulge. Spider veins, also known as telangiectasias, are actually dysfunctional capillaries, a very small type of blood vessel.

While spider veins respond well to sclerotherapy, we also treat them with lasers. Laser therapy for spider veins allows you to resume most normal activities directly after your treatment, as long as they don’t involve heat. For instance, we highly recommend that you avoid hot showers and aerobic activity, including running and dancing, for at least 72 hours afterward.

You don’t need to live with the fears, threats, and aesthetic issues connected with venous disease. Remove clots and diseased veins by contacting our team via phone or online form today.