Foam sclerotherapy is a relatively new method of treating veins by injections. Liquid sclerotherapy (which used to just be called sclerotherapy) has been around for decades.

What is Sclerotherapy?

Sclerotherapy is the injection of a substance into the veins which then kills the vein. The idea is that the body will then scar the vein away, meaning that over a series of several months the vein disappears on the surface.

The problem with injecting liquid sclerotherapy in any veins other than thread veins is that the liquid not only interacts with the vein wall but also interacts with the blood. This means that as soon as liquid sclerotherapy is injected into a vein, the blood reacts with it and forms a clot.

This has two effects.

1) The first is that if the blood is not flushed away by the liquid sclerotherapy, the clot will remain in the vein making the sclerotherapy less effective on the vein wall.

2) The second is that the clot of blood can then break down with time causing a raised lump which often stains brown on the skin surface. These stains are called “haemosiderin”.

Foam Sclerotherapy

In about 1985 foam sclerotherapy started becoming popular again although there are reports of it having been used in patients right back in 1935.

To make foam, we take the liquid sclerotherapy solution and mix it with air using two syringes. This produces foam which has the consistency of shaving foam. This can then be injected directly into the veins. The blood is pushed out of the vein, meaning that the sclerotherapy solution now has a direct action on the vein wall alone.

This means that the sclerotherapy is far more effective in destroying the veins and also the risks of blood clots and brown staining is far less.