Sclerotherapy - Clinical Evaluations

Clinical Evaluations

A study by Kanter and Thibault in 1996 reported a 76% success rate at 24 months in treating saphenofemoral junction and great saphenous vein incompetence with STS 3% solution. Padbury and Benveniste found that ultrasound guided sclerotherapy was effective in controlling reflux in the small saphenous vein. Barrett et al. found that microfoam ultrasound guided sclerotherapy was "effective in treating all sizes of varicose veins with high patient satisfaction and improvement in quality of life".

A Cochrane Collaboration review of the medical literature concluded that "the evidence supports the current place of sclerotherapy in modern clinical practice, which is usually limited to treatment of recurrent varicose veins following surgery and thread veins." A second Cochrane Collaboration review comparing surgery to sclerotherapy concluded that sclerotherapy has greater benefits than surgery in the short term but surgery has greater benefits in the longer term. Sclerotherapy was better than surgery in terms of treatment success, complication rate and cost at one year, but surgery was better after five years. However, the evidence was not of very good quality and more research is needed.

A Health Technology Assessment found that sclerotherapy provided less benefit than surgery, but is likely to provide a small benefit in varicose veins without reflux from the sapheno-femoral or sapheno-popliteal junctions. It did not study the relative benefits of surgery and sclerotherapy in varicose veins with junctional reflux.

The European Consensus Meeting on Foam Sclerotherapy in 2003 concluded that "Foam sclerotherapy allows a skilled practitioner to treat larger veins including saphenous trunks". A second European Consensus Meeting on Foam Sclerotherapy in 2006 has now been published.