Читать книгу VARICOSE VEINS AND VEIN DISEASES - Nikos Aledzhanov - Страница 3

The history of the issue

“… varix should be punctured in many places where circumstances indicate”

Hippocrates / Ιπποκράτης

The first pictire of varicose veins was found west of the Acropolis, dating back to the 4th century BC. A bearded man was depicted with a varicose vein on his left leg. In his work Comparative Biographies, Plutarch describes one of the first surgery for varicose veins. The Greeks were looking for new ways to treat and study the circulatory system. Diogenes of Apollonia and Euryphon of Cnidus in the 5th – 4th centuries were the first who described blood vessels and divided them into arteries and veins. Ideas that laid down in ancient Greece, such as miniflebectomy, vein ligation, compression therapy, are still used today. There are known cave paintings that indicate the use of a compression bandage in the earliest era of human development. Hippocrates believed that ulcers of the lower extremities are associated with varicose veins. In the treatment of ulcers, Hippocrates pointed the veins and bandaged the lower extremities. About the treatment of varicose veins, Hippocrates wrote: “… varix should be punctured in many places, where circumstances indicate.” The surgeons of the Hellenistic era were the first who dared to remove varicose veins. In earlier times, these operations were unknown. Byzantine doctors believed that the most common areas of varicose veins were the lower extremities, the abdomen (abdominal cavity “medusa’s head”), and the temporal lobe. The methods of vein surgery of the Byzantine doctors are based on the methods of the famous Greek doctors of the Hellenistic period, which moved into medieval surgery, influencing and inspiring even modern surgeons. For example, the modern “vein engaging technique” described in 1975 dates back to the Byzantine period. For its part, after a while, Friedrich Trendelenburg (1844—1924), conducting operations, refers to the operation described by the doctors of Byzantium and other ancient surgeons. The revolutionary method of surgical treatment of varicose veins was proposed in 1908 by the American physician W.W. Babcock, which consisted of the removal of the subcuticular veins. The next stage in the development of phlebology is associated with the emergence of X-ray diagnostic methods in the 1920s. The appearance of color-imaging ultrasound angioscanning and Doppler imaging was a breakthrough in the diagnosis and treatment of varicose veins. Sclerotherapy – the injection of chemicals (special foam) into the varicose vein appeared in the 1970s. The method of laser coagulation of varicose vessels, whichwas proposed by K. Bone in 1998—1999,remains one of the main methods in modern phlebology. This method became an important point in the treatment of varicosity.