What Does a Vein Specialist Do? Understanding the Role of a Vein Doctor

What Is a Vein Specialist?

Did you know that up to 25 million people in the United States have varicose veins? A vein specialist is a doctor who understands this and many other types of vascular issues, and can provide treatments to manage these issues and alleviate symptoms. Vein specialists are often doctors who specialize in vascular and endovascular surgery, or cardiothoracic surgery, but they often come from different background specialties, including interventional radiology, cardiology, emergency medicine, or even primary care. What links all of these skilled surgeons is that they have chosen to focus primarily on treating patients with vein disease.

What Conditions Do Vein Specialists Treat?

What is included in “vein disease?” This term covers a wide range of conditions, including spider veins, varicose veins, peripheral vascular disease, deep venous thrombosis, venous stasis ulcers, and more. Sometimes, the work done by vein specialists addresses symptoms like aches, cramps, heaviness in the legs, and the unsightly appearance of affected veins. In other cases, however, vein specialists do work that is much more serious than that. Sometimes, they are able to help save a limb, or even a person’s life.

Common Symptoms of Vein Problems

Some symptoms of vein disease are easy to identify. If you have bulging varicose veins or unattractive spider veins, you probably will recognize that you have a vein issue. However, vein disease symptoms go beyond bulging veins in the legs. You might experience swelling, redness, warmth, an itching, burning feeling, pain, and cramping, or a feeling of heaviness in your legs or arms. You might notice that you have brown, itchy skin by your ankle, which is a vein problem called stasis dermatitis, or you might have wounds on your lower leg that seem like they will never heal. This is another vein issue, known as venous leg ulcers. Any of these symptoms should prompt a visit with a vein specialist.

How Does a Vein Specialist Determine a Vein Diagnosis?

The way a diagnosis will be determined depends on the symptoms and the suspected underlying condition. Your vein doctor will begin by taking a complete medical history, including prior illnesses, surgeries, and medications, as well as your family history of vein issues. A physical exam will then be performed, so that the doctor can get a good look at the problems you are experiencing. After that, your vein specialist may decide to use imaging, like ultrasound or magnetic resonance imaging, to better visualize the veins. Special ultrasounds, called duplex and triplex ultrasounds, allow for more detailed imaging. Triplex ultrasound is sometimes referred to as color-flow imaging, because it allows the doctor to see the blood flow in color, in order to map the direction in which it is flowing.

Vein Treatment Options Provided by Vein Doctors

Just as your diagnosis is dependent on your unique situation, your treatment will be tailored to address your type of vein issue. Sometimes, lifestyle modifications will be recommended, including regular exercise and compression stockings. There are also several vein treatments available, for various conditions.

• Sclerotherapy: This is an ultrasound-guided process, in which the doctor injects a substance into the veins to seal it shut. This is often used with damaged veins that are too deep to be treated with other types of procedures.
• Phlebectomy: A minor procedure done under local anesthesia, this is a vein surgery in legs, used to remove the damaged vein.
• Endovenous Laser Therapy: This is similar to sclerotherapy, except instead of an injection, a laser at the tip of a thin fiber is used to collapse the vein, which is then cauterized.
• Radiofrequency Ablation: A minimally invasive outpatient procedure, this treatment uses radiofrequency energy to heat and close the vein walls so that blood will not enter the damaged area. The destroyed vein will be absorbed into the body, and the blood will begin flowing through nearby healthy veins.

Contact the Vein Specialists at California Vein & Vascular Centers

Don’t let vascular issues like varicose veins and swollen legs negatively impact your life. At California Vein & Vascular Centers, we provide high-quality results for vascular disorders, using innovative technology and customized treatments. Our board-certified surgeons have a reputation for being leaders in our field, and with good reason. California Vein & Vascular Centers is the number one clinic in California for vein procedures, top five nationally for the number of vein procedures we have performed, and top ten nationally for our treatment of peripheral artery disease. With locations in Los Altos, Los Gatos, Morgan Hill, and Salinas, we are proud to serve the Bay Area, providing care that stems from many years of experience. We have a 99 percent success rate, and we are committed to effectively identifying and treating vein and vascular conditions. To learn more about the precision treatments we provide, contact us through our website for more information or to make an appointment.