ABSTRACT
Background: Varicose veins are dilated, tortuous veins. It is an extremely common condition causing substantial morbidity. Prevalence of varicose veins ranges between 5% to 30% in adult population. Surgery is preferred over conservative treatment in symptomatic primary varicosis of the great saphenous vein (GSV). This study aims to compare the efficacy of GSV stripping by invagination technique in comparison to the conventional method in terms of time taken to strip the vein, the length of vein stripped, post-operative pain, area of bruising and intra-operative blood loss.Methods: The study was conducted in Dr. D. Y. Patil Medical College, Hospital and Research Centre located in Pimpri, Pune between July 2017 to September 2019.It is a prospective comparative Study. Subjects were randomly divided into 2 groups alternately where group A and B were operated by conventional and invagination techniques respectively and their outcomes were compared.Results: The mean age of the cases in Group A (conventional stripping) was 52 years and in group B (Invagination stripping) was 53 years. Blood loss was significantly more in conventional stripping compared to invagination stripping (p<0.001). The post-operative (after 1 week) mean VAS of the cases in Group A was 3.1 and 2.3 respectively while in group B it was 2.9 and 2.1 respectively. Time taken to get back to activity was significantly more in conventional stripping compared to invagination stripping (p<0.001).Conclusions: From this study we concluded that Invagination stripping is a suitable alternative to time honoured conventional varicose vein stripping with added advantage of less blood loss, less postoperative pain and shorter time span to get back to work.