Abstract

Objective: Injection sclerotherapy is an important primary and adjunctive therapy in the spectrum of care for superficial venous insufficiency. Aim of this study is to compare the preliminary outcomes between duplex-guided foam sclerotherapy and duplex-guided liquid sclerotherapy. The sclerosing foam was produced by Tessari's method. At a minimum, the injected sclerosant must remain in contact with the vessel wall (dwell time) long enough to have the desired effect on the endothelium. Ideally, a sclerosant should stay in the target vessel until that vessel has fibrosed or should wash out from the vessel after a dwell time sufficient to damage the target without damaging any vessels into which it subsequently comes in contact.

Method: It is an institutional based prospective comparative observational study carried out in Midnapore medical college and hospital between March 2021 – August 2021. Total 60 patients are selected by simple random sampling and using proper exclusion criteria. These selected patients are finally divided into two groups of 30 patients each. First group undergone foam sclerotherapy using 1% and 3% sodium tetradecyl sulphate (STS). Second group undergone liquid sclerotherapy using 1%,3% STS. Data is recorded and analysed using SPSS software.

Result: Foam sclerotherapy is more likely than liquid sclerotherapy in occluding superficial varicose veins after 4 weeks [X2 (1,N=60) = 21.6964, p < 0.00001].Recurrence following Foam sclerotherapy is less likely than liquid sclerotherapy after 6 months [X2 (1,N=39) = 19.5, p = 0.00001].

Occlusion following Foam sclerotherapy is more likely than liquid sclerotherapy after 6 months [X2 (1, N=60) = 32.8507, p < 0.00001].

Conclusion: Foam sclerotherapy is far better than liquid sclerotherapy (p value <0.00001) in occluding the superficial varicose veins and also recurrence is very less in foam sclerotherapy (p value = 0.00001).

Keywords:  Foam sclerotherapy, liquid sclerotherapy, varicose veins.