Venous ulcers
Venous ulcers occur when valves in your veins which carry blood back to the heart donot work properly resulting in leg swelling.
This leads to multiple dilated tortuous swelling in the leg along the inner and outer aspect of leg and thigh known as varicose veins.
Venous ulcers occur commonly on inside of ankle and lower part of legs. It’s important to differentiate between different ulcers
Causes of ulcer on the inside of ankle?
As valves of the veins are different and donot function properly there is stasis of blood and blood circulation back to the heart does not work properly.
Venous insufficiency
- Congenital hypoplasia or aplasia i.e.anamolous development of valves
- Compression or obstruction of veins
- Ruptured varicose veins
- Arterio-venous anastomosis and many more
Risk factors for venous ulcers
- Varicose veins
- Old age
– female gender as hormonal changes are common
– Family h/o venous insufficiency
– obesity
– pregnancy
– smoking
How does a venous ulcer look like ?
The ulcer has a ragged irregular edge and found typically on the inner side of ankle and lower leg. It might have mild discharge, sometimes foul smelling if it’s infected and the discharge colour depends on the organism involved.
What should I do if I have venous ulcer features?
- You have to be cautious as you might land up in complications like infection involving skin and subcutaneous tissue leading to cellulitis ,
- Skin changes leading to venous eczema,
- ulcer not healing,
- ulcer getting infected and leading to septicaemia.
- Infection of underlying bone leading to osteomyelitis
- Rare cases ulcer turning to malignant ulcer
- Ulcer becomes stalled in inflammatory stage leading to chronic non healing ulcer
So if you have any of the above symptoms,notice and notice above features of venous ulcers kindly consult your Diabetic foot surgeon and Wound care specialist at the earliest to avoid complications and prevent limb threatening amputation. Be cautious and follow the advice given by your Diabetic foot surgeon and Wound care specialist
