Is Spider Vein Removal Easy?

When we refer to millions of people having spider veins, this is no exaggeration — they affect more than half of women and plenty of men, as well.

The news when it comes to these spindly surface veins is good and bad. Let’s start with the bad — once spider veins form, they don’t go away on their own. And now for the good news — spider veins aren’t usually medically concerning, and we can easily get rid of them with our advanced leg vein treatments.

Since vascular care is half of what we do as cardiovascular experts, Dr. Satjit Bhusri and our team at Upper East Side Cardiology offer spider and varicose vein care at our dedicated Vein Institute. To learn how easy our spider vein treatments are, read on.

Where did those spider veins come from?

When we discuss spider veins, we find it helpful to paint the complete picture so our treatment options make more sense.

Oddly enough, spider veins don’t actually occur in veins, but in smaller blood vessels called capillaries, venules, and arterioles. Thy can show up anywhere on the body, but they tend to strike the legs and face. For the purposes of our discussion, we’re only going to focus on leg veins.

There are many reasons why women are up to four times as likely as men to develop spider veins, and most boil down to reproductive hormones and pregnancy.

Other drivers of spider veins include age, obesity, and trauma, and there’s also a strong heredity factor.

Treating spider veins is quick and easy

However your spider veins came to be, the good news is that they usually aren’t cause for concern as they only affect tiny, superficial blood vessels. If you recall, however, the bad news is that they’re not going away unless you have us treat them.

Now back to the good news — spider vein treatments are effective, as well as quick and easy.

Using the power of light to tackle spider veins

In most cases, we can make quick work of spider veins using intense-pulsed light (IPL) therapy. This noninvasive laser technology is perfectly designed to break apart surface issues on your skin, such as spider veins, as well as other blemishes like age spots. 

When we target your spider veins with IPL, they absorb the light as heat, which breaks apart the damaged blood vessel, allowing your body to reabsorb the remnants.

In most cases, we perform a series of IPL treatments to completely eradicate them. But, there’s no downtime after your IPL treatments, and we can treat a number of spider veins at the same time.

Sclerotherapy for larger spider veins

If you have a larger spider vein, we might turn to one of our effective sclerotherapy treatments that we use to address varicose veins. With this approach, we inject something into the blood vessel, such as a foam, that blocks the vein and causes it to collapse.

As you can see, spider vein removal is easier than ever because we have all our bases covered between IPL and sclerotherapy.

To figure out which spider vein treatment is best for you, call our New York City office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 212-752-3464. Or you can request an appointment online by clicking here.