Varicose Veins – Definition

Transcript

“Today we’re going to discuss the problem of superficial venous disease. And that is just a fancy term to refer to what people commonly know us varicose vein disease. And to be very simple, varicose vein is an enlarged vein is bigger than normal. Veins are very numerous in our body. There’s tens of thousands of veins in a huge network. These to be there from your head to your toes. Now, varicose vein disease most often affects the lower extremities, the legs, and that’s what we like to circumscribe or limit the discussion to varicose veins affecting the lower extremities or the legs. And in those lines, there is once again, tens of thousands of veins that are interconnected in a large network in your legs. And those, if you want to divide in systems, they can be divided in three big systems, the shallow veins, those where you can see with the naked eye, the deep veins, those veins that run closer to the bones in your leg, much deeper, and the interconnecting veins or known as peripheral veins.

So in this discussion from those two systems, we want to focus on the shallow veins. Those that you can actually see with the naked eye. And those veins can be located from the groin to your toes. And unfortunately, there’s so many veins that for some people it’s overwhelming to think that you can cure some people from this problem, but fortunately you can divide these veins into the shallow veins, and these shallow veins, all these thousand of them, they depend on the status of two major veins. And those are called a great saphenous vein and this small saphenous vein. The great saphenous vein is the vein that begins by your inner ankle at that bone in your ankle. And that travels up in the inner side of your leg, crosses the knee and goes up into your groin. And at the growing level is when it dives down and joins the deep system. That’s where that vein ends, that is called the great saphenous vein and forgive my showing. But this is going to be the easiest way to show you. He goes from the ankle all the way to the groin.”