What Is Echo-Sclerotherapy?

Ultrasound Guided Sclerotherapy

If your spider veins or varicose veins cannot be seen on the skin’s surface or may be larger affected veins beneath the skin’s surface, your doctor may opt to solve your vein issues through ultrasound-guided sclerotherapy, also called echo-sclerotherapy.

During this treatment, which also is conducted in your doctor’s office without the use of anesthesia, your doctor will first use ultrasound to create a map of your varicose veins and vein systems, to get a better look at the ‘highway’ beneath your skin’s surface and see the deeper varicose vein formations that may not be visible on the skin’s surface. This inside look, using completely non-invasive ultrasound technology creates your doctor’s plan for your sclerotherapy solutions.

Next, your vein specializing physician will use ultrasound imaging to visualize your affected veins on an ultrasound screen, then use real-time ultrasound monitoring to guide the needle that will inject treatment solution into the vein. Your doctor will be able to see the sclerosant entering the vein to the ideal measurement for treatment, and all additional affected veins will be injected and treated using the same high-tech visualization technique.

Echo-sclerotherapy might be used on veins that cannot be treated with lasers, or it may be used in combination with other types of treatments, according to your doctor’s expertise in choosing the ideal pairings of procedures to achieve optimal results. It might, for instance, be selected as a next step after varicose veins recur after vein stripping, endovenous techniques or surgery.

While the term echo-sclerotherapy may sound intimidating, it simply allows your physician to get a better look deeper into your affected veins and treatment areas, to deliver the ideal chemical treatment to seal and eliminate varicose veins that could, over time, become more pronounced and perhaps even cause more dangerous vein conditions that would require more invasive procedures to solve.

When you go for your follow-up visits, ultrasound visualization will be used to monitor your vein’s closing-up progress, and echo-sclerotherapy can also at that point be used to administer additional treatments to your known affected varicose veins and address any residual varicose veins spotted by your trained and experienced medical professional.