Laser Leg Vein Therapy Cutting Through Confusion

Within laser leg vein therapy are many confounding voices. Is it the be all and end all? How much can it achieve? What about other light therapies?

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Expanding applications are arising. Different wavelengths. Various delivery platforms. Each new version is touted as the ultimate. Much like new medications!

First developed in 1960, although suggested by Albert Einstein as far back as 1917 in an academic paper, lasers have expanded relatively rapidly.

Applications for them have grown.

Laser leg vein therapy example with the Xeo Cool Glide 1064nm NdYAG laser showing output end

Example of leg vein laser with Xeo Cool Glide 1064nm showing laser emission port

With increasing computing chip power producing more variable control their precision has expanded.

That and the use of diodes have increased their range even more.

Why Laser?

As Einstein suggested in his paper on quantum theory and its relationship to light, lasers produce a very specific wavelength of light all in synch, often perfectly aligned and consequently very powerful.

It is this very tight signal that makes them so effective. Along with their intense focused power.

Directed the right way they can be very effective. But also risk harm if used incorrectly.

For medical applications, like laser leg vein therapy, their power is such that they fall into a category known as Class IV.

Intense brightness of 578nm wavelength from Dual Yellow copper bromide laser over leg.

This denotes an ability to cause tissue damage as well as injuring eyesight much more quickly than your body can respond.

A blink in a reactive reflex to bright pulse will not be quick enough. The laser energy will already have caused its harm.

This very characteristic is what makes them so effective. So much so that many assume its action is merely a tissue heat interaction.

Other Suggested Approaches

Therefore any source of heat applied to the same tissue would give comparable results.

However this is far from the case.

The specific interactions of laser are very different from radio frequency and regular light sources.

But failing to distinguish this results in many claims for non-laser sources being able to achieve the same results.

Lasers in Laser Leg Vein Therapy

Examining the various lasers that can be used for laser leg vein therapy will clarify this to some extent. In spite of the variety out there.

What’s so different about lasers?

The laser’s wavelength will determine how it interacts with tissue.

Specific wavelengths will be absorbed differently by various parts.

The amount of power delivered will determine the tissue effect.

That and the length of the pulse itself. Shorter and shorter pulses produce different interactions and results.

Important when considering treating spider veins, or aiming for deeper reticular veins. Large varicose veins call for other strategies and approaches.

Tissue Penetration

Light penetrates only a certain distance though tissue. Some gets reflected back. Some will go into it, being absorbed by the tissue more and more as it goes deeper.

That light does manage to go through your skin to any depth at all is easily demonstrated and recognised.

You will no doubt have had the experience of shining a torch through your hand. Some light definitely passes through.

Often altered in colour.

Within tissue longer wavelengths penetrate more deeply. But there is a limit to how long it is workable to extend it if you wish to prevent damage to other non-vein tissues.

Laser leg vein therapy with the Venacure 1470nm laser allows for delivery inside a vein by a fibre-optic cable

Venacure 1470nm laser for delivery of laser energy inside a vein by a fibre-optic cable.

Enough energy needs to reach the target vein to effectively remove or close it.

It is surprising how deeply various laser wavelengths can penetrate. Which has useful applications.

Beyond a certain depth though, the energy left is not enough to close the target vein down. Which is why those designed for treating large varicose veins usually deliver the signal through a conducting fibre optic tube.

Large gnarly surface veins will also prove too big for effective closure from laser energy delivery outside your body.

As a rule of thumb any vessel greater than 3mm in diameter cannot be successfully closed from outside the body by even the most powerful platforms available.

Surgery Or Otherwise

Public perception of lasers equates very much to ideas of a surgical approach to laser treatments for varicose and even spider veins.

I cover these ideas in more detail further on.

Laser And IPL

Laser leg vein therapy can often be equated with Intense Pulsed Light treatment or IPL for short. Distributors of such equipment often call their platforms lasers. Which they are not.

I will explain more on this in the section on the various lasers for leg veins as well as elsewhere for faces and other body regions.

There is a place for IPL in some body area treatments but not in effective treatment of leg veins.