What are the treatment options for children with Varicose Veins?

Varicose veins can be symptomatic or asymptomatic, i.e. they can be causing a patient symptoms or they can represent a cosmetic problem. If we look at the recommendations from the National Institute of Clinical Excellence that were published in 2013. It is very clear that people who have varicose veins that are causing symptoms in the leg, such as swelling, aching, itching, bleeding, or even ulceration, should be referred to a vascular specialist for a duplex examination and consideration of intervention and treatment to their veins. It is very important that patients are not fobbed off just with compression hosiery. It is very important that they are formally investigated and receive a duplex ultrasound to evaluate what is the best form of treatment. The treatment options include surgery, other interventional techniques, which have been developed from the 1990s and the early 2000s. Traditional surgery involved a general anesthetic, often a cut in the groin and a stripper was put down the vein to pull the vein out and there were other incisions on the leg to remove other veins. This usually required a general anesthetic and at least a day case admission and occasionally an overnight admission to hospital. Things have undoubtedly changed. can now be offered endovenous interventions which can be done under local anaesthetic and these include methods such as laser or radio frequency ablation which cause the vein to be closed after it has been burnt. You can also use a chemical in the form of a sclerosant using a technique called mechanical chemical ablation or just straightforward chemotherapy. Another option is to insert something called glue which will stick the two vein walls together. However this is the way of treating the main varicose veins. There may often be very large bulging veins which are tributary veins. These are probably best treated by being hooked out by something called phlebectomy or multiple avulsions. An alternative to this is actually the injection of foam medicine which is called foam sclerotherapy which also causes a chemical reaction to irritate the vein wall to try and encourage it to close.