Your body has a whopping 60,000+ miles of blood vessels, and most are invisible — quietly working inside your body to circulate your blood. So, it can be disconcerting when veins start to bulge through the surface of your skin, mostly in your legs, and you’re wondering whether something’s going on with your circulation.
The short answer is that varicose veins do reflect a circulatory issue, but their presence is often a cosmetic concern more than anything else — unless other symptoms develop around the vein.
At Upper East Cardiology, Dr. Satjit Bhusri and the team at our Vein Institute have helped hundreds of patients deal with problematic varicose veins. While many varicose veins aren’t medically serious, some can act as harbingers of more serious vascular issues.
In the following, we take a look at 3 red flags when it comes to varicose veins that fall outside cosmetic concerns.
Many people with varicose veins don’t report any symptoms beyond the appearance of the bulging vein(s) on their leg. Some, however, do develop symptoms like itching around the vein, which likely indicates venous stasis dermatitis.
With venous stasis dermatitis, the blood that’s building up in the vein starts to leak out into your skin. This blood can then block oxygen from reaching your tissues, which causes them to become red and itchy.
In severe cases, you can develop painful sores in these areas, so we recommend coming to see us for a vein evaluation at the first signs of itchiness.
If you develop swelling in your lower legs and you have varicose veins, this may point toward a cardiovascular condition called chronic venous insufficiency (CVI), which affects 1 in 20 adults.
The swelling is called edema, and it occurs when blood isn’t being pushed back out of your legs efficiently. Instead, it’s pooling and the pressure is forcing fluids out of the blood vessels and into surrounding tissues, which is what causes the swelling. The reason why blood isn’t flowing out of your legs properly is because the valves in the veins aren’t shutting all the way, which is the hallmark of CVI.
If you develop any leg swelling and you have varicose veins, please come see us as soon as possible so we can work on improving the circulation in your legs.
Varicose veins develop in the surface veins in your legs and not in the deeper veins that do most of the circulatory work. On rare occasions, a severe varicose vein can lead to a blood clot in one of your deeper veins, which leads to a serious condition called deep vein thrombosis.
Signs of deep vein thrombosis include pain, swelling, and redness in the area where the clot has formed, and these are symptoms you shouldn’t ignore.
The takeaway here is that anytime you develop symptoms around your varicose veins, it’s worth your while to have us check them out as they might indicate more serious cardiovascular issues.
For expert evaluation of your varicose veins, you can start by requesting an appointment online at our New York City office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan or you can call us at (212) 752-3464.
