If you're over 30, you've probably noticed your leg veins are getting a little more prominent. Varicose veins can bulge and become ropey-looking. They can also cause your legs to ache.
By the time you notice varicose veins on the surface of your legs, they've been forming for years.
They run in Sherry Harrell's family. When they started creeping up about 10 years ago, her only option was vein stripping, or surgically taking the leaking vein out. Now, there's a new, much less invasive, way to fix the problem.
Harrell, a 44-year-old Peachtree Corners mother of three, is in great shape and she's got great legs to prove it.
"I'm always in shorts and things, and I like to wear heels because I'm shorter," Harrell said.
But Sherry visited Dr. Todd Greer at Vein Clinics of America in Alpharetta because of varicose veins.
"It's considered vein disease. It is hereditary, my mom have varicose veins, sister has some, and aunt," said Harrell.
Sherry's had the bulging veins for about a decade, but in the last three or four years, they've really started throbbing.
"That's what really brought me in, was that they're aching a lot. And then secondly, certainly, just that it would look better, because I'm realizing, it's only going to get worse," said Sherry.
An ultrasound showed why Sherry's leg hurts. The valves in her greater saphenous vein, a large blood vessel deep in her thigh, are leaking. So, instead of flowing towards her heart, the blood is flowing backwards, down Sherry's leg, causing the pressure to build.
Greer thinks he can fix the problem with a 15 minute procedure called endovenous laser ablation. He numbs Sherri's leg vein with a local anesthetic and then threads a tiny laser up to the source of the leak.
"So the patient doesn't feel the laser whatsoever, slowly withdraw the laser, and the heat seals the vein, almost like closing a zip lock bag," said Greer. "We treat the veins from the inside out, bigger veins, to the smaller veins, out to the surface."
Once the big vein is sealed, Dr. Greer tackles the smaller veins with ultrasound-guided injections to shut them down, too. He says if you have varicose veins, and can document medical complications because of them like pressure and pain, most insurers will cover treatments like this.
Fifteen minutes after Sherry's procedure, she's back on her feet, wearing a compression stocking that will be part of her life this summer, but headed home, pain-free.
Sherry was able to go back to her normal activity level right way. She will wear compression stocking on her leg for the rest of the summer and needs to avoid heavy strain exercises like leg lifts, but she could already see improvement, and says the pain wasn't bad at all.
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Varicose veins can bulge and become ropey-looking. They can also cause your legs to ache.
