Microsclerotherapy is the technique used to treat spider veins or thread veins of the legs. It is a procedure that involves injecting a liquid into the veins which destroys them and causes them to disappear over time. This treatment is done with a magnifying lens and an infrared vein mapping device. It is suitable for use on spider veins on the legs or body. As gravity has an effect on the blood in the veins and also as the skin is more sensitive to burns, microsclerotherapy is the most preferable treatment for thread veins below the heart.
Microsclerotherapy involves meticulous injection (often with the aid of magnification, transillumination, or augmented reality) of a sclerosant solution using very fine needles. A transient burning discomfort from sclerosant entering larger veins may occur, but this usually lasts less than a minute. Sclerosants cause irreversible damage to the inner wall of the vein, resulting in a scarring reaction called ‘sclerosis’. This leads to permanent closure of the vein. The sclerosed vein undergoes a slow transition over time to become a fibrous cord and eventually disappears completely as the redundant scar tissue is removed by a process called ‘apoptosis’. The sclerosants are used at The Vein Clinic are sodium tetradecyl sulphate (STS) and polidocanol.
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