Nuke Your Veins

Varicose veins aren't pretty and can sure be painful, too. A new out-patient procedure zaps away varicose veins in less than an hour. Patients walk out of the clinic looking pretty and feeling no pain.

Leaky Veins

Venous insufficiency afflicts more than 30 million Americans. The condition causes leaky veins that lead to discomfort and varicose veins. Leaky veins can restrict a sufferer's activity due to the discomfort caused by the condition, and may also affect the sufferer's quality of life for aesthetic reasons—leaky veins are ugly. Vein expert Dr. Joseph Magnant believes the problem is more common than most people realize. "It is an incredibly common problem, if you look at a circle of friends, say you have twenty friends, I'd say five of them have this problem."

Varicose veins most often appear on the legs. They occur when veins can't do their job as they should. The heart serves to pump blood all through the body and this helps supply it with nutrients and oxygen. The arteries are the vehicle through which the blood is carried from the heart to the body. It is the job of the veins to carry the blood back to the heart after it has been depleted of its oxygen and nutrients so these can be replenished.

Backwards Flow

The blood is pulsed up from the veins toward the heart through the contraction of muscles in the legs. The veins have valves that prevent the blood from flowing in the wrong direction. If the valve is faulty or weakens, the blood flows backwards, pools, and forms bulges within the vein. It is these bulges that are known as varicose veins.

In Magnant's Fort Myers, Florida office, patients can have their leaky veins fixed by being treated with something the doctor calls a, "microwave on a stick." For this life-changing procedure, Magnant makes a tiny incision. Through this small opening, the vein specialist can thread a catheter on through to the site of the leak. Intense microwave heat is then released at the site so that the vein is sealed shut.

The procedure is very fast. "From the time I started the heating process at the top to the bottom was a total of three minutes," explains Magnant. Patients leave Magnant's office feeling like they could run a marathon.

Microwave procedure

Vein patients are awake during the entire microwave-employing procedure, and feel quite relaxed. This is as opposed to varicose vein patients who used to be treated with extreme and complicated measures such as vein stripping. Magnant talks about how far varicose vein treatment has come from the old days, "The risks of going to the hospital, being put to sleep, having incisions made—the pain of the stripping process which sometimes last for months—that's no longer the case," notes Dr. Magnant.