New cures for venous leg ulcers explained by Professor Whiteley at The Lindsay Leg Club 27 Sept 2018
On Thursday the 28th of September, Professor Whiteley gave a guest lecture at the Lindsay Leg Club annual conference. The title of the talk was “Latest challenges and barriers relating to wound management of the lower limb”.
Professor Whiteley explained that most venous leg ulcers can be now cured under local anaesthetic. By understanding the venous system, patients with venous leg ulcers can now expect to be cured.
This is because the treatment protocols, such as the Whiteley Protocol, identify the underlying cause of the leg ulcer. This underlying cause is identified using venous duplex ultrasound. The underlying cause is almost always “hidden varicose veins” or even obvious varicose veins!
Using local anaesthetic endovenous laser, TRLOP and ultrasound guided foam sclerotherapy, these veins can almost always be cured. Once cured, the ulcer heals in an average of 18 weeks.
Patients with venous leg ulcers who can walk, are usually suitable for this sort of treatment. Unfortunately patients who cannot walk do not get any benefit and are not suitable for this treatment. The reason for this is that although it is possible to fix the underlying vein problem, if the patient is not able to walk then the veins cannot be stimulated to pump properly.
In some patients, the deep veins have been damaged. So local anaesthetic techniques aren’t able be used to treat them. However, many of these patients can now be treated by opening the damaged veins with stents. Therefore, even if patients with venous leg ulcers have been told that they have got damaged deep veins, there are now treatments for many of these patients.
Latest challenges and barriers relating to wound management of the lower limb
Mark explained that the key to treating leg ulcers successfully is to understand the underlying venous system and how to fix it.
He explained that the book he had written, “Understanding Venous Reflux: the cause of varicose veins and venous leg ulcers” was a simple introduction for both patients and healthcare professionals to how vein problems because varicose veins and/or leg ulcers.
Professor Whiteley showed the different patterns of vein disease that cause leg ulcers. He also showed how most of them can now be tackled by endovenous surgery.
Therefore the keys to curing venous leg ulcers is to understand the underlying vein problem, having a venous duplex ultrasound scan by a specialist venous clinic and then having endovenous surgery to the underlying veins in suitable cases. This will result in a cure in 85% of patients with venous leg ulcers who are able to walk.
The Whiteley Clinic are the leading vein specialists with over 20 years of experience. Through our dedicated award winning research we are able to offer the best treatment available. At The Whiteley Clinic we perform our procedures under local anaesthetic meaning our patients can walk in and walk out after treatment.
The Whiteley Clinic have also developed The Whiteley Protocol® which ensures that all patients receive the best level of care resulting in the best results
If you are concerned about your vein health call The Whiteley Clinic on 0330 058 1850 to book a consultation.
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