Fair Skin, Spider Veins, Vein Injections, And You: How This All Works

People most likely to suffer from spider veins, those tiny, wriggly veins close to the surface of your skin, are those with very fair skin. The veins go hand in hand with people who blush easily, flush hot often, and burn easily too. The veins can be seen in the thighs, cheeks, and sometimes the breasts/chest, too. If this sounds a lot like you, you may want to consider treating the spider veins with spider vein injections. Here is how this works.

Finding the Main Vein

A cosmetic surgeon examines the areas you want to treat. Usually, spider veins are tinier extensions of a greater vein. If you look closely enough, you might see the heat of a larger vein at the base of a spider vein tributary. If you press on this larger vein head, the spider veins lose color and almost disappear completely. If you release the pressure, the spider veins refill with blood and become pinkish or reddish again. These are the "main vein" spots the cosmetic surgeon is looking for.

Saline Injections

At one point, a harsher chemical agent was used to collapse spider veins. Even though it was effective, it was also quite painful and patients did not respond well to it. It was later discovered that a saline solution could collapse the spider veins just as easily, and that has been the method of choice ever since. 

After your cosmetic surgeon finds the main veins, he or she will inject the spider vein tributaries that have sprouted off the main veins. The spider veins will swell and sort of explode. There may be some minor bruising when this happens, but because these tiny veins have just been ruptured, they will not reform when you heal up from this procedure. The pain is really minimal compared to other vein procedures.

Repeat Treatments

Repeat treatments are not treating the spider veins that were initially treated. Sometimes the main veins decide to sprout more spider veins to put in place of the ones that were destroyed. When that happens, you may need extra spider vein treatments. It may also help if small cuts in the surface of the skin are made to remove tiny sections of the visible spider veins prior to injecting the solution. Eventually the main veins will stop producing these capillary tributaries and the spider veins will be completely gone from the treatment areas, leaving you with clear skin.