Manhattan Vein Specialists Explain the Two Main Categories of Vein Disease

To understand what can go wrong with your veins, it is important to understand how they work when things are going right. Your arteries have their own internal muscles to pump blood "downwards" from the heart to your extremities. Your veins, however, rely on the movement of muscles to compress the veins and pump blood. As you move your arms and legs, the contraction and expansion of your muscles compresses nearby veins to pump deoxygenated blood "upwards" back to your heart. This is made possible by a series of tiny, one-way valves that open to allow the blood to flow through, but then close afterwards.

Two primary conditions can interfere with this normal functioning of your veins and cause problems. The first is insufficiency, a disease in which the valves become "leaky" and allow blood to flow back into the veins and pool there. This can cause a number of adverse effects, including varicose veins and the many complications that arise from them. The second condition that can affect your veins is thrombosis – a buildup of blood clots inside the veins, which at best restrict the proper flow of blood and impair your circulation, and at worst travel through the veins to other locations, where their presence can be deadly.

Chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) is the most common form of vein disease

According to Manhattan vein specialists, this condition, also known as venous reflux, occurs when the valves in your veins don't close properly and allow blood to flow back into them. This causes the veins to expand as blood pools in them, and also often allows them to be seen below the surface of the skin as they take on the bluish-purple color of deoxygenated blood. The resulting condition is called varicose veins.

Venous insufficiency does not always result in varicose veins, but without NYC vein treatment it does almost always result in unpleasant symptoms. The most common are weak, tired, and swollen legs and ankles, which over time can become so painful that the patient is barely able to walk. Ignoring the venous insufficiency even further can result in changes to the color and texture of the skin surrounding the swollen veins, and can even result in the formation of leg ulcers – open, bleeding sores that do not respond to normal attempts to treat them because poor circulation keeps them from healing.

Thrombosis is more hidden, but more dangerous

Thrombi (blood clots) can appear in superficial (close to the skin surface) veins, but more commonly appear in the larger, deeper veins of your legs, where (unlike superficial varicose veins) they cannot be seen. There are few overt symptoms that reveal the presence of deep vein thrombosis (DVT), so sadly many people who have developed such blood clots don't know they are there.

This is a dangerous situation because even if the blood clots remain in place where they originally form, they are crippling your circulation and thus impairing your immune system and overall health. But the real danger occurs when one or more of these blood clots breaks loose from where it formed and travels via the veins to another location in the body. If the thrombus reaches the brain it can cause a stroke, and if it reaches the lungs it can create a pulmonary embolism (PE). The latter condition is so linked with deep vein thrombosis that doctors refer to it by a combined acronym – DVT/PE. Hundreds of thousands of Americans die of DVT/PE every year, most of whom never knew they had a vein disease.

How do you find out if you have either CVI or DVT?

The answer is remarkably simple – pick up your telephone and call the NYC vein treatment center of New York Cardiovascular Associates at 646-233-1838. Schedule an appointment for a venous health screening. During this screening, which is painless, non-invasive, and takes only about an hour, our doctors can quickly determine the exact state of your vein health. If you don't have vein disease but are at high risk of developing it because of your age, gender, heredity, or other factors, we'll give you advice on how you can prevent it. If we do find evidence of vein disease, we'll present to you all of the treatment options, and help you choose the ones that are best for you. The good news is that modern, minimally-invasive vein treatment in Manhattan is so fast and efficient that it takes only about the same amount of time as the screening. Find out more at our website: http://www.nycva.org/.

Author Bio: The writer is an expert in the field of Spider & vein treatments specialist in Sleep Center Manhattan and Varicose Vein Treatment NYC.