 |
| Medical Warning - Patients Beware! |
|
Do you know what your doctor is
injecting into your varicose and spider
veins? You should. Most
doctors who treat veins ‘part time'
use the old fashioned medication known
as ‘saline' or hypertonic saline.
This medication is nothing more than
strong salt water. It destroys veins
in much the same way that pouring salt
water on weeds kills them by dehydrating
their cellular tissues. Saline was
never actually FDA approved for use
in varicose or spider veins, but doctors
can use it for this condition if they wish. The
problem with saline is that it usually
causes burning and stinging during
and after injection, and you can only
use very small amounts during any given
treatment, making your treatments numerous
and costly. Most
true vein specialists do NOT use saline.
The
medication that most vein specialists
use is called Sotradecol®. This medication
has been around since the mid 1940's.
It is FDA
approved and decades of use worldwide
have proven this medication to be both
safe and effective for both large varicose
veins and small spider veins. There
is a major problem with Sotradecol®,
however. There is only
one company in the US that can legally
manufacture and sell this drug. Because
they are the only one, they have set
the price of this medication rather high.
To get around this, many physicians who
treat veins have turned to compounding
pharmacies to make Sotradecol® for them
using a much less expensive industrial-grade
form of the chemical. This
industrial grade chemical has impurities
that are not entirely removed during
the processing at compounding pharmacies.
These impurities are potentially dangerous, but unfortunately,
the FDA has not yet stopped physicians from obtaining
these unlicensed and unregulated chemicals.
We
want to reassure our patients at the
Vein Center of Charlotte that we use
only brand name Sotradecol® from Bioniche
Pharmaceuticals, the only company licensed
by the FDA to manufacture this medication. Although it costs
us more to use this medication for your treatments, you can be
absolutely certain that you are getting the purest,
safest, and most effective medication
possible.
Do
you know what the other vein clinics are
using? Ask them if
they use brand name Sotradecol® from Bioniche
or are they using a compounding pharmacy?
It's your body and you have a right to
know what is being injected into it.
|
|
|
