Sclerotherapy uses a very fine needle (much smaller than a flu shot!!!) to inject a “sclerosing” chemical into the dilated vein.  This irritates the walls of the vein and causes them to “stick” together.  Subsequently, blood cannot flow through the vein and the body will reabsorb it, causing the appearance to fade away.

Our practice utilizes STS (Sodium Tetradecyl Sulfate) and Polidocanol as sclerosing agents.

Patients will experience significant improvement after 1-2 sessions but may require multiple treatments for regression of the veins.  Each treatment session will last from 15 minutes to 1 hour depending on the extent of disease.  Treatment sessions are generally spaced 4-6 weeks apart.

Sclerotherapy is used as adjunctive therapy to endovenous ablation or microphlebectomy for residual varicose veins, spider veins, and reticular veins.  The chemical agents are the same but the concentration differs and ultrasound is sometimes utilized, thus describing the procedure as ultrasound guided “foam sclerotherapy”.

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