Varicose Veins

Hello, my name is Steve Elias, Dr. Elias. I'm a vascular surgeon, and I practice in New Jersey, USA. Today we're going to talk about some of the newer devices that are out there to treat varicose veins. Patients may look at their veins on their leg and say, oh, this is my problem, the veins that I see. But most of the time the problem really is from veins that are a little bit deeper under the skin. And the great majority of treatments we do to start with is to treat the underlying source. So this device, which is called Clarivain, is a device that's used to treat the underlying source of the varicose veins. And the advantage of this device versus some of the older technologies we have is that this device does not use any heat to treat the vein. Older devices, we heat up the vein and we cause it to shrink and seal shut. But obviously, heat has some risks to it. You can injure some nerves and you can injure the skin when you use heat. This device uses a little wire that goes round and round. I don't know, it goes round and now. When the wire is going round and round, we inject some medicine into the vein. So the wire goes around, irritates the inside of the vein, and the medicine gets injected to cause the vein to shrink and seal shut. What patients feel is a vibration like an electric toothbrush on their leg. That's about it. So I'll just give you an idea. This goes round and round and we inject some medicine as it's going round and round. The procedure takes about 15-20 minutes at the most and patients wind up with a band-aid. There's one little needle stick, no cuts, no stitches. The next day you can basically go back to doing whatever you want. Results have been very good. This has been around for almost nine years now and at least 95% of the patients veins we treat stay sealed shut. So it's another option to take care of varicose veins.