Vascular Care Center of Salt Lake Sclerotherapy Vericose veins

Sclerotherapy is a treatment for so called "spider veins". The medical term is "telangectasia". These are small veins just under the skin that are unsightly and sometimes painful. Sclerotherapy means "scarring therapy" and we cause these veins to go away by scarring them shut and then waiting for your body's natural healing systems to re-absorb the veins. This works well, but it does take time and patience and the veins will look worse at first, and then will slowly disappear over several months. There are two types of sclerotherapy: Injection sclerotherapy and laser sclerotherapy. At the Vascular Care Center of Salt Lake, we employ both types of treatment depending on the size of the veins you are trying to get rid of.

Injection sclerotherapy is used to get rid of larger spider veins and the so called "reticular veins" that are the source of the spider veins. In this treatment, we use magnification to introduce a tiny needle into the vein and then inject an irritating substance into the vein that causes the vein to become inflamed, allowing the body's repairing systems to absorb the vein and make it disappear. The needles are very small, so it is not very painful. Most people tolerate it very well and do not need any anesthesia for this treatment. However, there are several things you should know. In order for the treatment to work well, it is important that you wear elastic compression stockings for 48 hours after the treatment, and it is possible that the blood in the destroyed vein will stain the skin brown where the vein used to be. Most of the time the staining will go away, but if it occurs, it can take a long time, up to a year, to go away. The occurrence of staining is related to skin type. We will analyze your skin type and be clear to you about your individual risk of staining and what you can do to minimize it.

For veins that are too small to get a needle into, we use a laser to heat the vein and seal it shut. Although lasers have been advertised as being painless, this treatment is NOT painless. It is not very painful, but some people prefer to have some numbing cream applied to the skin before laser sclerotherapy is started. The laser energy destroys the vein and again, it is absorbed by the body over the course of weeks or months. This is the most important fact about sclerotherapy that you should understand: It takes time. You should commit to this and expect some initial disappointment. However, if you are patient and persistent, you will be rewarded with very satisfactory improvement in the appearance of your legs and an end to the ugly, painful spider veins.