Chronic Venous Insufficiency (CVI)
(Part 1)
Chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) happens when your leg veins become damaged and can’t work as they should.
Normally, valves in your leg veins keep blood flowing back up to your heart. But CVI damages those valves, causing blood to pool in your legs. This increases pressure in your leg veins and causes symptoms like swelling and ulcers.
Overview
What is chronic venous insufficiency?
Chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) is a form of venous disease that occurs when veins in your legs are damaged. As a result, these veins can’t manage blood flow as well as they should, and it’s harder for blood in your legs to return to your heart. CVI causes blood to pool in your leg veins, leading to high pressure in those veins.
CVI can happen due to damage to any of your leg veins. These include your:
* Deep veins, which are large veins deep in your body that run through your muscles.
* Superficial veins, which are close to your skin’s surface.
* Perforating veins, which connect your deep and superficial veins.
CVI may cause mild symptoms at first.
But over time, this condition may interfere with your quality of life and lead to serious complications.
Chronic venous insufficiency vs. post-thrombotic syndrome
Both terms refer to the same problem of damaged leg veins. Post-thrombotic syndrome is chronic venous insufficiency caused by deep vein thrombosis (DVT).
DVT is a blood clot in a deep vein in your leg. “Post-thrombotic” means after a blood clot (which is also called a “thrombus”). After the blood clot is gone, it can leave scar tissue that damages your vein.
About 20% to 50% of people who’ve had DVT develop post-thrombotic syndrome, usually within one to two years.
How common is chronic venous insufficiency?
Venous disease in general is very common. For example, varicose veins affect about 1 in 3 adults.
Each year, about 1 in 50 adults with varicose veins go on to develop chronic venous insufficiency.
Chronic venous insufficiency usually affects people over age 50. The risk goes up the older you get.
Overall, chronic venous insufficiency affects about 1 in 20 adults. (To be continued)