The importance of being active following varicose vein surgery

One of the most important bits of information I give to the patients I treat is activity. And I say it's very important to be as active as you possibly can after the procedure. The reason being that a complication of vascular vein surgery is deep venous thrombosis. This is a blood clot in the deep veins which run between the muscles of the leg. and the way to avoid having a deep vein thrombosis is to be active. Stagnant blood can clot but circulating blood will not clot. Your risk of DVT is probably about one in a thousand after varicose vein surgery but I think you can reduce that significantly by being active. What is being active? I tell my patients that every hour at least they get up and walk around for a minute, even a few minutes will be sufficient. The worst thing in the world is for a patient to have varicose vein surgery and then go and take to their bed for a period of a week or two. I think my personal feeling is that will be increasing their risk of deep vein thrombosis needlessly.