Leg Vein Treatment While Pregnant – Or Should We Call It Leg Vein Non-Treatment During Pregnancy
Pregnancy will often worsen both varicose and spider veins in women who are predisposed to developing the enlarged bulging veins. For many obvious reasons most physicians prefer not to treat pregnant woman with any elective procedures during those nine months. While it may sound very scary, in days gone by doctors actually occasionally operated on very severe varicose veins during pregnancies. This is almost unheard of today and its for the best. While there were not negative effects documented to the baby in utero, our understanding of pregnancy has gotten better. Dr. Schulman of the Schulman Vein And Laser Centers Of Long Island And NYC, also points out that the administering of anesthesia during old fashioned vein stripping and ligation itself may have had unrecognized effects on the fetus. Fortunately the classic invasive surgery with its need for general anesthesia and ‘souvenir’ scars is almost never done today.
Even minimally invasive varicose vein procedures are not done while a woman is knowingly pregnant. Any vein specialist who does a great deal of work on leg veins occasionally gets the “you treated me one week ago and I just found out I’m pregnant” phone call. While the vein doctor obviously can’t untreat the patient, there are almost no reports in the medical literature on pregnancy related problems or complications due to vein therapy while caring. If injection therapy was done, unknowingly, the medicines are generally very dilute and there again are no reports of problems after unfortunately treating a pregnant woman. If laser therapy had been done the risk would not be the laser itself but rather the local anesthesia used along the vein being treated. Again the vein doctor can’t ‘untreat’ the patient but as with injection therapy I know of no reports in the medical literature where this has been done or has led to complications during pregnancy.