Non-inflating anesthesia surgery for varicose veins is safe and has a quick recovery: Health & Welfare News

【Health and Welfare News】 Research results have shown that safe and effective surgery is possible even without expansion anesthesia in radiofrequency occlusion surgery for the treatment of varicose veins (chronic venous disease).

Professor Cho Deok-gon’s team (Hyeon Gwan-yong and Lim Gong-min) from the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at St. Vincent’s Hospital of the Catholic University of Korea divided 109 patients who underwent radiofrequency occlusion for varicose veins into a group that underwent conventional expansion anesthesia and a group that used an internally cooled catheter without expansion anesthesia. Surgery time, pain level, and incidence of postoperative side effects were compared and analyzed.

As a result of the study, the average procedure time for non-expansion anesthesia surgery using a high-frequency catheter equipped with an internal cooling function was 31.4 minutes, which was significantly shortened compared to the average procedure time for conventional expansion anesthesia of 42.3 minutes. Additionally, there appeared to be no difference in pain or side effects between the two groups.

▲ (From left) Professor Deok-gon Cho, Professor Moon-yong Moon, and Professor Gong-min Lim

Radiofrequency occlusion is a minimally invasive surgical method widely used to treat varicose veins. When using a conventional catheter, expansion anesthesia was essential to prevent nerve damage due to heat. However, dilatation anesthesia has the disadvantage that the procedure time is long and, in rare cases, side effects may occur due to the toxicity of the local anesthetic along with pain.

Accordingly, Professor Deok-Gon Cho’s team applied non-expandable anesthesia surgery using a high-frequency catheter equipped with an internal cooling function to patients and evaluated its safety and effectiveness, showing that the success rate of vein occlusion was high even without the use of existing expansion anesthesia and recovery after the procedure. I confirmed that it was fast.

Professor Lim Gong-min, the lead author, said, “The significance of this study is that it confirmed that safe and effective surgery is possible without expansion anesthesia by using an internal cooling catheter in radiofrequency occlusion of varicose veins (chronic venous disease).” .

In particular, Professor Deok-gon Cho, the lead author of the study, said, “As the effectiveness and safety of non-distension anesthesia radiofrequency occlusion surgery have been confirmed, we hope that this treatment will become a better treatment option for patients with chronic venous diseases.”

Meanwhile, Professor Deok-gon Cho’s team’s research paper, ‘Single-center retrospective study on chronic varicose vein surgery under non-expandable anesthesia using an internally cooled high-frequency catheter,’ was published in the September online edition of Phlebology, an international journal of phlebology.