treatment of great saphenous vein insufficiency by endovenous laser therapy: clinical description and short term follow up of 20 iranian patients

introduction: endovenous laser therapy (evlt) for greater saphenous vein (gsv) insufficiency is a newly established method of treatment only recently made availablein iran. the present study seeks to describe the results of the first 20 patients treated with evlt at shohada-e tajrish medical center, tehran, iran. methods: 20 patients (16 male, 4 female) with the mean age of 38.9 and an average length of symptoms of 5.9 years, were treated with a 980-nm laser diode under local anesthesia. ceap classification (clinical severity, etiology, anatomy, pathophysiology) and avss scores (aberdeen varicose vein symptom severity score) were used to determine disease severity and symptoms before and after the procedure. outcome was measured by the rate of recurrence as shown in doppler ultrasonography evaluation. results: the mean procedure time was 49 minutes, and the mean admission time was 1.1 days. a success rate of 85% percent was recorded at 6-12 months of follow up. the patients showed a significant reduction in avss and ceap scores (pv=0.0001), pain (pv=0.00001), parasthesia and edema (pv=0.001). conclusion: evlt seems promising as a novel method of treatment for gsv insufficiency in the iranian population with many advantages, including higher success rates in comparison with conventional methods of treatment.