Spider Vein Risk?

Spider veins that are not treated have no specific risk associated with them. Over time, they may increase in number, but it's hard to predict if, when, and to what degree that will happen. If you feel they are unsightly, you may consider sclerotherapy to treat them cosmetically. If not, there is no medical need to do anything.

Spider veins are not dangerous and the reason to treat them are for appearances only. That being said they are easily treated by your local dermatologist with a simple procedure called sclerotherapy.

Spider veins may progress rapidly over a 2 to 5 years period of time or they may change very little over that period of time. Unfortunately, this aspect of spider veins and their progression is difficult to predict. Most people are genetically predisposed to develop more and more spider veins as they age. My estimate is that this would occur 80 percent of the time and only about 20 percent of those people would have either no or slow progression over the aging process.

Spider veins, untreated, may become more numerous but are not medically necessary to treat. Underlying larger veins may need to be treated if they are they cause if their valves are malfunctioning. Those might become painful and need need treatment.

Spider veins are great to treat as they are unsightly and many people choose to use sclerotherapy to get rid of tem but they have no health concerns if left untreated.  Even if treated you can still get new veins in the future so treating the veins you have may or may not prevent new ones from forming.

Spider veins slowly worsen with time and are easy to treat with sclerotherapy injections which don't hurt and run around $350 per session and require 1-3 sessions a month apart.  Sincerely, David Hansen,MD

Generally, the caliber of the vessels may slowly enlarge or spreading of the vascularity may occur with time. However, it really depends on the cause (perforators, systemic disease, steroids, etc.)