When you look at your legs, do they resemble an Orlando road map? You know: lots of twisty, turny blue, purple, and red lines, with some in 3D as they bulge out at you.
The smaller lines are spider veins, but the bigger, gnarled veins that rise up under the skin’s surface? Those are varicose veins. Their appearance can make sufferers feel self-conscious about their legs. Suddenly shorts, skirts, and swimsuits get relegated to the no-man’s-land of back-of-the-drawer space.
Worse, they can also ache and be symptoms of a deeper circulatory issue. At Florida Lakes Vein Center, we speak veins. You might even call us your “varicose whisperer,” helping community members manage their condition with cutting-edge varicose vein treatments in Sarasota.
Request a vein screening with our team of vein specialists. This diagnostic session can help you understand the severity of your varicose veins, see if there are indications of a more pressing venous disease, and address their appearance. You can also call Florida Lakes Vein Center to ask questions and set up your screening.
Gain back your confidence about your leg’s appearance, and your venous health. And read on about how Florida Lakes Vein Center can make those varicosities “no vein, all gain.”
Setting Expectations for Condition Management
Statistically, 20% of all adults in the United States will suffer from varicose veins at some point. Once varicose veins happen, there’s no “cure” that completely stops them from showing up again.
The good news is, our varicose vein treatments in Sarasota can provide relief for the symptoms, and help with the underlying cause(s).
The Consultation
When you come to Florida Lakes Vein Center for a vein screening, your vein specialist will also discuss your symptoms, health history, activity levels, and other factors relevant to your situation. We listen closely, ask the right questions, and make sure you as a patient are heard and understood.
This information provides an important and relevant backdrop for the next step diagnosing the current condition and potential causes for your venous insufficiency issue.
Symptoms we usually discuss include:
- Leg/ankle swelling
- Skin itching/burning skin
- Open wounds or sores
- Skin discoloration
- Restless legs
- Leg pain (cramping/aching/throbbing)
- Leg heaviness
- Skin texture changes
We’ll also ask about possible contributing lifestyle or work-related situations, such as:
- Are you active or sedentary?
- Do you sit for long periods?
- Are you a smoker?
- Do you stand for long periods?
- Are you premenopausal/menopausal?
When we’re fully informed on these or any other issues, we’ll move on to ultrasound diagnosis.
Related topic: Lymphedema treatment in Sarasota.
Finding the Issues
We’ll examine the veins inside of your leg without using X-rays or any invasive procedures. Instead, your provider will perform a vein ultrasound to view the soft tissue and blood vessels in your leg.
Combining Doppler ultrasound and Duplex ultrasound, your vein specialist can see—in real time and extraordinary detail—your leg’s blood flow, including any blockages.
Now we can make a personalized treatment plan to help you reduce or eliminate the symptoms, and reclaim more of your mobility and quality of life. Treatment plans will look different for each patient, which is why this consultation is so important.
Often, we’re able to move directly from your diagnosis into one of our varicose vein treatments in Sarasota, thanks to our minimally invasive and convenient treatment options.
Treatments for Varicose Veins
Our experienced vein specialists—TC Lackey II, D.O, Francesca Mertan, PA-C, Raeann Fultz, PA-C, Melissa Fleck, M.D., and Lauren Fazenbaker, PA-C—head up a team of compassionate professionals who will help you heal, and show you how to manage the condition.
Varithena
Varithena vein treatment can help restore a pain-free, active and confident lifestyle. Varithena doesn’t require surgery or any general anesthesia, sedation, or incisions.
During each Varithena session, we apply a topical numbing solution for maximum comfort. Then, your vein specialist performs one or two injections to fill the varicose vein with a medical microfoam. This forces the distended vein to safely deteriorate and collapse, redirecting blood flow to nearby healthier veins.
Not only does this effectively erase the varicose vein, it also improves your circulation and mitigates the pain and discomfort associated with varicose veins.
You may need multiple sessions, depending on how many veins need to be addressed, and possible new occurrences in other damaged veins.
VenaSeal
VenaSeal treatment provides 2 immediate benefits:
- You only need a one-time series of injections.
- There’s little to no downtime.
As one of our popular varicose vein treatments in Sarasota, your Florida Lakes Vein Center specialist injects VenaSeal’s proprietary medical adhesive into specific locations in the varicose vein. This seals the varicose vein, stopping blood from pooling in it.
Now blood can flow to healthier veins as your body absorbs the closed vein, making it disappear.
Related topic: How to improve circulation in Sarasota.
Sclerotherapy
Sclerotherapy works in a similar fashion to the other treatments—except that it can also address spider veins before they become varicose veins.
In either case, sclerotherapy involves the injection of a special solution called “sclerosant” into the varicose vein/spider vein. This sclerosant irritates the vein wall, which makes it swell and then collapse. Your blood redirects to healthier veins, and over time your body absorbs the collapsed vein.
Ulcer/Wound Care
If your varicose veins have reached Stage 5 or Stage 6 and are presenting ulcers and/or sores, our wound care can help remediate the skin damage and promote more efficient healing.
Venous insufficiency makes these ulcers and sores more problematic, because blood flow has diminished and your blood can’t deliver the body’s natural healing components. This leaves the wound open, risking various infections and other debilitating or even life-threatening issues.
Our care team will carefully clean and treat the wound to allow it to heal properly and relieve you of long-lasting discomfort.
The Stages of Varicose Veins
Our online vein screening tool can help you determine whether or not you should come in for a personal vein screening. As you examine your legs, see if they match any of these stage descriptions.
Stage 1: First Appearance
It starts with possible pain or tenderness in the legs, coinciding with:
- Cramps
- Swelling
- Feeling of heaviness
- Itching
- Burning
- Tiredness
- Restless legs
These can be signs of venous insufficiency. If your blood isn’t flowing back like it should, it pools in the veins, stretching them and damaging valves that help prevent backflow. Small red or blue veins begin to appear under the skin’s surface, looking much like tree branches or lightning arcs.
These tiny, dilated veins—”spider veins”—generally measure one millimeter or less in diameter. Spider veins indicate that your leg’s veins have begun to develop leaky valves.
Stage 2: Progression to Varicose Veins
Untreated spider veins can cause further collapse, where the veins become engorged and swollen from stagnant blood. They turn a darker blue, red, or even purple, with a raised, ropey appearance.
At this stage, most patients become aware that there’s an issue. Not only is there the appearance of the varicose veins, but the affected leg exhibits heaviness, itching, pain, inflammation, and/or vein rupture. The symptoms can worsen by the end of day, with some relief coming when the legs are elevated (usually in bed).
Varicose veins can also frighten a person because they are delicate. If they’re particularly close to the surface, a shaving nick or a scratch that punctures the varicose vein can cause a profuse amount of bleeding.
Stage 3: Swelling
If a patient leaves their varicose veins untreated, blood can pool in the lower extremity and thus swell their legs and ankles. This increase in fluid causes tight-feeling skin, heaviness, restless legs, and a leathery look to the skin.
Leaky valves create the swelling, as they have now faltered to the point of not being able to circulate blood back up to your heart. As pressure builds in these distended veins, other fluids can leak out into the surrounding tissue, furthering the swelling and possibly leading to edema.
Stage 4: Skin Discoloration
Have you ever noticed someone—friend, relative, or perhaps yourself—with calves or ankles that have taken on a rust-colored tone? That skin discoloration signifies stage four venous disease.
This color change happens because of the breakdown of blood pooling in the lower legs. The pooled blood’s hemosiderin (iron) releases and collects in the skin, causing the dark reddish hue.
Stage 5: Skin Health Degradation
In this stage, wounds (leg ulcers) occur in addition to the Stage 1 through Stage 4 changes to the legs. Some ulcers may heal and disappear with minimal care, but often, chronic ulcers develop instead.
Wounds can be scarred over and difficult to heal. Also, the risk of life-threatening blood clots rises significantly, making venous ulcer care essential to improving overall health and quality of life.
Stage 6: Open Wounds
Finally, the lack of blood flow and resultant deficiency in skin nutrition create active ulcerations (open wounds) which weep and bleed.
Venous stasis ulcers account for 90% of all lower-extremity ulcers. These slow-to-heal leg ulcers can leak a foul-smelling yellow/green fluid or pus, and frequently have a burning sensation and cause pain when contacted.
Prolonged existence of active ulcers creates risks for development of other issues, including:
Cellulitis. An infection of the skin and soft tissue of the legs.
Bacterial Infection. Causing redness, swelling, fever, chills, and more.
Bone Infection. Without healing, particularly bad ulcers can cause osteomyelitis which may lead to amputation.
Lipodermatosclerosis. Fat under the skin can become inflamed, hardening the skin and causing swelling.
Malignant Growth. In about 5 percent of cases, venous stasis ulcers can lead to squamous cell carcinoma.
Stop Hurting and Start Healing
Get rid of the roadmap of pain that spider veins and varicose veins create. Schedule a vein screening so that together we can discover the issues, and create a custom care plan including our noninvasive, state-of-the-art varicose vein treatments in Sarasota.
Contact us online, or call 941.866.8989 and we’ll prove that when it comes to varicose veins, you can achieve “no vein, all gain.”
About Florida Lakes Vein Center
Leading the way for vein care in the lakes region, we have performed over 10,000 vein treatments to date. We use a range of cutting-edge procedures that effectively treat vein disease without painful incisions or lengthy downtime.
Our team also educates patients on vein disease, causes, treatment options, and how they can take a proactive role in their health every day. Get back to living the life you love with Florida Lakes Vein Center—where being the best in the field is a real “no veiner.”