NEW ORLEANS — Do your legs ache, cramp, or swell? There is a condition that you may have that millions in the U.S. have been living with for years, that is being misdiagnosed.
And it's a condition that can, in many cases, be easily treated, and people worldwide are turning to a doctor in Houma for answers.
And that doctor had a patient who was treated for cellulitis 57 times, in and out of the hospital, and told he had bad neuropathy and congestive heart failure. But one quick diagnosis and treatment of a vein, and he was healed in a few weeks.
If any of the medical pictures of the legs look familiar, you could be one of the 180 million people in the U.S. who has venous disease.
We're not talking about the arteries that carry the oxygen-rich blood to all the organs, that can get clogged with plaque, but the veins that circulate the used blood back to the heart and lungs.
“This is hidden in plain sight. I can't tell you how many people have seen this and know nothing of it, and nothing of the potential treatment for these maladies,” said Dr. Craig Walker, President, Founder and Medical Director of the Cardiovascular Institute of the South in Houma. He also is a clinical professor of medicine at Tulane and LSUHSC.
Dr. Walker has been saving people's lives, and legs from amputation, for years. And for the 24th year at his seminar in New Orleans, he is teaching doctors from 10 countries how he does it. He says more people have dangerous vein problems than Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes, and many other heart conditions, combined.
“If you've got vein insufficiency in your legs, you might put as much as 20 pounds of fluid in just your legs. So, a lot of these people are treated with diuretics when they should not be.”
Some people think unsightly veins are just a cosmetic issue, but they can cause about a dozen painful symptoms which be a sign of serious underlying problems, that can be quickly treated.
“I’ve seen people with venous ulcers for 30 years who heal within a few weeks. imagine how happy those patients are,” he noted.
One patient’s sheets had to be changed a few times a night from the fluid. After Dr. Walker opened up a compressed vein in the pelvic area, in six weeks he was completely healed, and the chronic illness was gone.
Many ultrasound tests only look for a clot and not the much more common compression of a vein higher up in the body, in the lower abdomen.
“In fact, I cannot tell you how common I see completely wrong diagnoses with this, and they're treated for other disease processes, such as cellulitis, neuropathy, or congestive heart."
And in other patients, there can be clots of blood, not plaque, in the veins that can be removed, taking away the risk of death from a pulmonary embolism.
“This, honestly, in a matter of minutes can take a patient who is on death's doorstep, and convert that to a patient who's comfortable in bed on no oxygen,” Dr. Walker said.
This is a group of vein conditions that is costly in dollars and lives.
“It's the second leading cause of sudden death, and it's the leading cause of preventable deaths in hospitalized patients.”
So, what are some of the causes? Some people are prone to veins being compressed. Other causes, injury to the hip-pelvic area, long bouts of being immobile, veins that have scarred down, like from dialysis, and if you are on birth control pills and you add smoking on top of that, the doctor said that is like putting a match to gasoline.
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