Pelvic veins and perforators at Veith in New York

Professor Mark Whiteley is heading to the world famous Veith Symposium New York to speak on Pelvic Veins (ovarian veins) and perforator veins in relation to reducing the recurrence from Varicose Vein surgery.



Veith Symposium 2013 - Prof Mark Whiteley speaking in
Session 1 and Session 2



Mark Whiteley be speaking on Tuesday 19th November - see program here: http://veithsymposium.org/index.php?pg=program-2013

Read Mark Whiteley in The Huffington Post

Mark S Whiteley writes about varicose veins and leg ulcers in The Huffington Post

Mark Whiteley has become a contributing author to The Huffington Post.

His first article on Support Stockings in Varicose Veins is available on:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mark-s-whiteley/support-stockings-a-stick_b_2330053.html

"Pioneering research means Whiteley is still leading the way"

For full article, see Surrey Advertiser 25th May 2012
Business News Extra - page 4

This week, Mark Whiteley and his research fellows at The Whiteley Clinic were featured in The Surrey Advertiser.

The article outlined the research and development that The Whiteley Clinic has supported over the last 10 years, in the areas of Varicose Veins treatments, Leg Ulcer Treatments and the development of Laser Sweat Ablation.

Students (ether students wanting a career in medicine or medical students who want to progress their careers) who would like to get involved in the research, are invited to contact The Whiteley Clinic on info@thewhiteleyclinic.co.uk.

"Shaving Foam" for Varicose Veins

In today's Times is an article on page 37 entitled ""Shaving Foam" treatment of varicose veins passes test".

Although a very good piece to attract interest and funding, the article states that the treatment of varicose veins "usually" consists of "stripping them out" under "general anaesthetic".

Well as anyone who has been following our work at The Whiteley Clinic will know, we were presenting prize winning research in 2005 showing such treatment to be inadequate (www.veinstripping.co.uk) and our work was even featured in the Mail in December 2010 in a feature entitled:

"Ladies, stop stripping .... (your varicose veins that is!)

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1335718/Ladies-stop-stripping---varicose-veins--A-leading-vascular-surgeon-says-outdated-procedure-replaced-laser-treatment.html

Therefore although Foam is a good procedure in minor cosmetic veins, or in some recurrent veins, it is only really useful when used in CONJUNCTION with other endovenous techniques such as endovenous laser ablation (EVLA), radiofrequency ablation (RFA), coil embolisation etc.

Thus, as the research is fairly clear that in large varicose veins where the main vei to be treated is larger than 6 mm the results from foam sclerotherapy are far inferior in the medium to long term compared to these other endovenous techniques, the Times article should be considered with some caution.

Foam Sclerotherapy is an excellent treatment when used in combination with other endovenous vein treatments, but is rarely the optimal treatment when used alone.

Celebrity varicose vein diary - Eve Cameron in SHE magazine

The beautiful Eve Cameron (beauty editor and author) has written up her experiences of having her varicose veins treated at The Whiteley Clinic in this month's SHE Magazine - June 2009.

In the article - "Vein Hopes" on page 101 and 102 - Eve explains what made her decide to come to The Whiteley Clinic for her vein surgery.

She then goes on to describe the process that she went through - using EVLA (Endo Venous Laser Ablation), TRLOP (TRans Luminal Occlusion of Perforators - invented at The Whiteley Clinic), phlebectomies (removal of the surface veins) and finally sclerotherapy injections under ultrasound guidance.

Eve has published her own before and after photos as part of the article - showing the improvement that she obtained.

In the article, Eve Cameron does point out all of the things that are usually left out - the bits she didn't like and the cost!!!

However, the article is well worth the read as an unbiased diary of someone who has gone through The Whiteley Clinic protocol and seen our results for themselves.

Stripping varicose veins - who would have it done?

In the last week I have seen many patients who have re-grown their varicose veins after having had them stripped. It is unbelievable that in this day and age, surgeons still strip veins and patients still let them - and what shocked me more is that a recent study showed that despite our research, about 80% of surgeons still perform this barbaric (and often useless) procedure Click here for paper.

Tying of varicose veins was invented in the 1890's by Trendelenberg - and stripping the veins away was added the the procedure to make it more complete. Unfortunately, although it would seem logical to "remove the vein" to stop it coming back, this isn't what happens.

Unlike organs, such as the gallbladder, which you can remove permanently, veins are part of the body's connective tissue. This means that they are involved in the healing process. Thus when you injure yourself, the skin and connective tissue heals.

When a vein is stripped away, the body doesn't know it has been taken away by a surgeon - it thinks that the body has been damaged - and so it tries to grow the vein back again.

Prize winning research by us at The Whiteley Clinic, which was published in 2007 Click here for paper, shows that almost a quarter of people start growing the stripped veins back again within one year - and we are just about to present our latest research showing that well over three-quarters of people have grown the whole vein back again 5 years after stripping!!!

Put against this, we have already shown that 5 years after closing the same veins with heat using Whiteley Clinic procedures, NONE of the treated veins have re-opened.

With such a huge difference at 5 years between stripping (over 75% veins regrowing) and closing the veins with heat using Whiteley Clinic protocols (0% reopening), it would probably be unethical to perform a randomised study to re-prove the obvious - and which patients if told about the difference, would ever let anyone perform a stripping procedure on them?

It is very hard to understand why so many surgeons still offer stripping. Presumably most have not learnt how to perform the new techniques such as EVLA (endovenous laser ablation), VNUS Closure FAST, RFiTT etc.

It is even harder to understand why patients, with such ready access to information on the Internet, both through simple sites such as veinstripping.co.uk and veins.co.uk as well as scientific papers Click here for paper allow surgeons to offer such damaging surgery with such poor long term results.

Of course there is no law against this, nor is the doctor doing wrong, provided each patient has been fully informed of the alternatives to their stripping - even if the surgeon does not offer the alternatives themselves - and they are satisfied that stripping is really the best for them.

For my part, we have produced proof that stripping causes regrowth of the veins, and our alternatives have much smaller scars, allow return to work quicker, are under local anaesthetic and so allow walk-in walk-out procedures AND stop the treated vein opening up again in the future.

Certainly the patients that seek us out at The Whiteley Clinic having got their varicose veins back again having had stripping elsewhere have seen the problems that stripping can cause.

Working Sunday

After a very lazy Saturday, today (Sunday) is another work day.

Our banner advert was in the Mail on Sunday today (see picture) in the Health Section. Unfortunately I have only just noticed the mis-spelling of Venus Closure - rather than VNUS Closure!!!!

However, it is good to have reinforcement out their about our pioneering varicose veins surgery and laser sweat ablation surgery.

Tomorrow, the BBC Online is meant to be publishing a video on our Laser Sweat Ablation video - so the rest of today is going to be updating my personal site - www.MarkWhiteley.co.uk and www.laser-sweat-ablation.co.uk.

However, I will have to stop at 14:30 for the Rugby ....... I hope we play better this week!!!!!

10 year Anniversary of Keyhole Surgery for Varicose Veins in the UK

On the 12th March 1999, Judy Holdstock (chief vascular technologist at The Whiteley Clinic) and I performed the first VNUS Closure operation in the UK.

It was the first pinhole surgery operation for varicose veins in the UK - although the media have now started calling these sorts of operations "Keyhole" surgery operations for varicose veins. By doing this operation, we introduced this new sort of surgery into the UK.

So on Thursday, it will be our 10 year anniversary. In the last 10 years, we have developed the procedures and invented new techniques - such as our TRLOP technique - TRans-Luminal Occlusion of Perforating veins, won prizes and published our research.

Some of our work that should have changed the way veins are treated includes our research - published in July 2007 - that shows that the old "tie and stripping" of veins allows veins to grow back again. When compared to our results using VNUS (radiofrequency) or EVLA (Laser), none of the veins treated over the last 10 years has grown back and only one in 5,000 has opened again. in this one case, we did not stick to our Whiteley Clinic protocol and too little energy was used to close the vein.

Last year, several reports appeared in the press including some videos on TV, sowing some new keyhole surgery being "pioneered" at a London teaching hospital - your can still find one of these videos on the Internet. They show a surgeon using a technique called VNUS Closure FAST to treat a patient with varicose veins under local anaesthetic.

Unfortunately - they did not mention that the first VNUS Closure FAST in the UK was performed by Mark Whiteley and that the surgeon featured had previously undergone training at The Whiteley Clinic and had worked in a Whiteley Clinic franchise in Harley Street in 2008. The "pioneering" surgery had been going on at The Whiteley Clinic (as it still is) rather than the featured teaching hospital.

So today we took an advertorial in The Daily Mail in celebration of our 10 years - and to help people understand that not only were we the first to introduce these techniques to the UK - but we have continued to develop these techniques and introduce others, to make sure we offer our patients the very best results available from vein surgery.