Ease leg pain, improve appearance

When warm weather came, Angela Snodgrass shunned wearing shorts. Only capris. They covered up the unattractive veins in her legs.

As a physical therapist and mother of two young children, she's on her feet a lot. Since her first pregnancy seven years ago, she had itching, ankle swelling and dull, aching pains in her legs.

At work, she took breaks from standing by sitting on a stool. At home, she couldn't stand up after showering to finish getting ready for work due to pain in her calves.
"It just got progressively worse," said Snodgrass, 32, of Connersville, Ind.
"The varicose veins bothered one leg during my first pregnancy and then the other, too, during my second pregnancy. I also noticed more spider veins," she said, while getting injection treatments at the Decatur Vein Clinic in Greenwood.

Last month, she started to get relief at the clinic. As she nears the end of her treatments, which included endovenous laser procedures and injections, her pain and unsightly veins are almost gone.

Like Snodgrass, many women - and some men - are getting help from a number of minimally invasive procedures available to help aching, painful legs and enlarged veins that can appear twisted and bulging.

"All you have to do is spend a day at the pool and you see how many people it affects," said Dr. William Finkelmeier, a vascular surgeon with VeinSolutions. "It's really a significant problem."

About 50 percent to 55 percent of women and 40 percent to 45 percent of men in the U.S. suffer from some type of vein problem, the Office on Women's Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says. Young women also are affected, particularly because of pregnancy.

Vein-clinic doctors say public education about treatments is improving, and varicose vein research has advanced in the past 15 years.

This month, a new injectable liquid drug, Asclera, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in April, became available in the United States. It primarily can be used to treat tiny, spider veins or small varicose veins.

With deeper varicose veins, clinics normally first use laser or radiofrequency endovenous techniques. They involve putting a small tube into a vein, inserting a probe with a device at the tip that heats up the inside of the vein and closes it off.

The problem is that many people delay or don't seek treatment.
"Most of our folks have been dealing with symptoms - legs aching, throbbing, heaviness - for five to 10 years before coming in," said Dr. Jeffery Schoonover, regional medical director for Vein Clinics of America

BARB BERGGOETZ • THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR • JULY 6, 2010