ABSTRACT
The new approach to treating venous insufciency is determined by four rules: increased efcacy of the therapeutic agent, decreased postoperative disability, improved aesthetic results, and, above all, reduced side effects and complications. For most of the previous century, the treatment approaches adopted classical stripping and sclerotherapy. New techniques such as cryosurgery in the 1980s and endovenous procedures in the 1990s appeared, as well as laser endovenous and radio-frequency ablation procedures, for example, the Closure® procedure. Also, several improvements to sclerotherapy were undertaken (for example, echo-guided sclerotherapy in 1985 and foam sclerotherapy [FS] in the 1990s).
