What can go wrong with varicose vein surgery

So what are the potential risks or potential complications you can get from varicose vein surgery? Now in terms of discussing potential risks from surgical procedures, you can have general risks and more specific risks. In terms of the general risks of any procedure you can have things like bleeding and infection and clearly we minimize the risk of, well we deal with bleeding as and when we see it in the operating theatre and if you do get bleeding afterwards then you must lie down and elevate the leg and put pressure on the bleeding point and that generally resolves itself within 15-20 minutes. Infection, some people do give antibiotics prior to the procedure or after the procedure. I don't think there's any great evidence to suggest that it's required, but it's very much, I think, surgeon's preference and you're welcome to have a discussion about that with your surgeon at the time of the procedure. More specific risks to the procedure include deep vein thrombosis. And in another video we've talked about what you can do to reduce the risk of deep vein thrombosis and it mainly revolves around being active after the procedure. In terms of long-haul flights, there's a lot of controversy about whether long-haul flights increase your risk of deep vein thrombosis. My personal feeling is that I would suggest erring on the side of caution and perhaps not taking long haul flights for perhaps a month after your procedure. Other risks of varicose vein surgery include pain. The majority of patients who have this procedure potentially require a few tablets of paracetamol in the days after the procedure and potentially nothing at all. But pain can happen, and it can happen for a couple of reasons. Very, very occasionally, because the nerves run close to the veins that we are treating with this heat energy, we can damage a vein. And it's a very unlikely occurrence, but can potentially happen that a long-term nerve injury can cause long-term numbness or pain. And if that does happen, then there may be ways of treating that with tablets, and that that may well potentially improve over time. Again, a common distress, it's a very rare occurrence. Another complication is something called thrombophlebitis. If blood gets into the vein that we've treated and clots, that will cause a hard, painful lump in that area where the blood has entered into the treated vein. The pain often resolves within a couple of weeks, but the lump can persist for months as the body breaks it down and dissolves it. But thrombophlebitis can also be seen a part of the normal healing process of this treated vein. Now varicose veins can recur, and if you wait long enough, potentially the majority of veins will recur. I think a reasonable ballpark figure is 10% over 10 years. The reason that's probably occurring is because the inherent weakness in the vein walls that led to the failure of the valves causing the varicose veins is an ongoing problem and veins can reoccur. The procedure can potentially fail, it's not something I've come across hardly at all in my practice but I know it is described in the literature and can potentially happen although we wouldn't expect failure to be expected. Okay, if you have your truncal varicose veins treated with potentially the endothermal technique, which is first line treatment, usually the visible varicose veins may well improve over time. And probably the majority of patients are happy with the appearance of their visible varicose veins if they wait long enough. By long enough I mean months, six, seven, eight months. If you do want those visible varicose veins treated at later stage, that is also an option. They can be treated with avulsions at a secondary setting or this foam injection that can be done, again in the outpatient environment.