Varicose veins are one of the most common vascular pathologies.
Varicose veins still bothered our ancestors, but then doctors tried unsuccessfully to overcome the disease. In our time, chronic venous insufficiency continues to disfigure beautiful female and male legs, however, modern medicine offers a wide range of methods on how to get rid of varicose veins on the legs.
According to some reports, more than 10% of the population suffers from the disease in one form or another, women are more susceptible to it.
Varicose veins can appear at any age, even childhood. The determining factor in the development of the disease is a hereditary predisposition.
The causes of varicose veins.
The main cause of varicose veins is a genetically determined imperfection of the connective tissue, including that which forms the vessels. Hereditary predisposition means that if the first-line relatives suffer from any form of varicose veins, the person is at risk of contracting this disease.
For the development of varicose veins, special conditions are also required, created by the patient's lifestyle. These factors cause the usual stagnation of blood in the lower body by creating a static charge.
Varicose veins on the legs often occur in people whose work is associated with a long position: hairdressers, shop assistants, operating surgeons.
Pelvic varicose veins can be triggered by pregnancy, as an enlarged uterus can cause prolonged compression of the pelvic floor veins. Also, varicose veins of the pelvis occur in people who lead a sedentary lifestyle.
Factors that interfere with blood circulation and cause varicose veins in the legs also include wearing tight clothes and shoes, the habit of sitting cross-legged. The reason for the development of varicose veins of the pelvis can be practiced incomplete intercourse as a contraceptive method.
Symptoms of varicose veins
Symptoms of varicose veins in the legs are as follows:
- Feeling of great tiredness, feeling of heaviness and fullness in the legs, worse in the evening;
- Leg pain, which does not have a clear localization, pain and jerks in nature, the pain syndrome also increases in the afternoon;
- The appearance of external symptoms of varicose veins on the legs. Telangiectasias, or spider veins, are an interlacing of thin purple or cyanotic vessels. As the disease progresses, large veins begin to appear in the form of swollen and sinuous subcutaneous cords, the so-called worm-like veins;
- At an advanced stage, signs of complications of varicose veins on the legs join: thrombophlebitis, trophic ulcers, thrombosis. These are formidable complications that cause a significant deterioration in the patient's quality of life (trophic ulcer), and in some cases even death (pulmonary embolism due to venous thrombosis of the lower extremities).
The symptoms of pelvic varicose veins in women are nonspecific and resemble the symptoms of an inflammatory disease of the female genital tract, so diagnostic errors are often made.
The main symptoms of pelvic varicose veins are:
- Intermittent aching pain in the pelvic area. The dependence of the pain syndrome on the phase of the menstrual cycle is traced, shortly before the onset of menstruation, the pain, as a rule, intensifies;
- Profuse mucous discharge from the vagina
A special case of the manifestation of varicose veins of the pelvis is hemorrhoids with all their inherent symptoms.
Symptoms of testicular varicose veins in men are often not noticed at all and are discovered by chance during a medical examination. As a general rule, this is a characteristic worm-like pattern of an enlarged venous plexus on one side of the scrotum, pulling unilateral pain in this area that appears after loading.
Diagnosis of varicose veins
The diagnosis is based on the symptoms of varicose veins, data from external examinations, and the results of hardware research methods. In this capacity, the most informative are Doppler ultrasound and duplex ultrasound.
If it is difficult to diagnose pelvic varicose veins in women, transuterine phlebography can be used.
To confirm the diagnosis of testicular varicose veins, special functional tests are used (for example, the Valsava test).
Varicose vein treatment
The treatment of varicose veins depends on the location of the pathology and can be conservative or surgical. The most used combination of several of them.
As a conservative treatment for varicose veins in the legs, drug therapy and compression are used. The use of drugs does not have an independent meaning, but it helps to relieve the symptoms of varicose veins in the legs: to eliminate the feeling of heaviness, fatigue and pain.
Compression therapy consists of the use of compression medical hosiery, which has a compressive and massage effect on the superficial veins, helping to eliminate venous congestion. Compression therapy is very effective and can be considered as a stand-alone method of treating varicose veins in the legs at an early stage of development or in the postoperative period. Currently, medical compression stockings are created from high-tech materials and do not cause any problems during prolonged use, including aesthetic ones.
The most radical treatment for all types of varicose veins is surgery. Now phlebologists prefer minimally invasive techniques: varicose vein sclerosation, laser surgery, endoscopic phlebectomy, microsurgical vein phlebectomy. These techniques allow you to achieve excellent results with minimal risk of surgical and postoperative complications.
The classic surgical treatment of varicose veins is also used, in which the damaged part of the vein is bandaged and removed. In this case, blood flow is prevented.
It should be understood that the modern treatment of varicose veins, with all its achievements, does not eliminate the main cause of the disease - the weakness of the vascular wall. Therefore, the treatment carried out requires the life-long prevention of the recurrence of the disease and, if possible, the complete elimination of the factors that contribute to the development of varicose veins. Only this approach will allow to speak of a complete cure of the disease.
The use of home remedies for varicose veins.
Home remedies for varicose veins are used quite widely and actively, but their effectiveness is usually negligible. The use of home remedies for varicose veins is justified as a symptomatic therapy to reduce the discomfort caused by the disease and its complications. As a rule, for this purpose decoctions and ointments based on medicinal plants are used, which have anti-inflammatory and antibacterial effects.