Posted By Carolyn Weaver, Executive Consultant

When we talk with primary care physicians, there is always the question of when to refer patients to vascular surgeons. One area that is overlooked for treatment is CVI. What is CVI? When your leg veins cannot pump enough blood back to your heart, you have chronic venous insufficiency (CVI). CVI is also sometimes called chronic venous disease (CVD). Avoid getting CVI while at your desk or when traveling in airplanes by routinely getting up and moving around to let the muscles in your legs pump the blood back up to your heart.

The venous market can be equivalent to your current invasive vascular market. In doing recent readings on recommended treatement by primary care physicians, the old standard of compression is the treatment of choice without consideration of the options for the more serious cases of CVI which may be treated with injections, called sclerotherapy, or with surgical procedures. Fewer than 10 percent of people with CVI require surgery to correct the problem. Surgical treatments include ablation, vein stripping, bypass surgery, valve repair, and angioplasty or stenting of a vein.

Resource:  http://www.vascularweb.org/patients/NorthPoint/Chronic_Venous_Insufficiency.html