How Laser Treatments Can Treat Spider Veins Caused By Rosacea

30 April 2021 by Brent Woods

A variety of skin conditions can affect your face, and rosacea is one of the most common. This mysterious skin condition can cause a number of problems with your facial complexion, including so-called 'spider veins'. Fortunately, modern laser face treatments are a highly effective way to minimize the appearance of unattractive spider veins.

How Does Rosacea Cause Spider Veins?

Rosacea is a chronic skin condition that causes the skin on your face to become red, inflamed, and irritated. Rosacea occurs in many forms and can affect different parts of your face, depending on the type of rosacea you suffer from. The nose and cheeks are most commonly affected, but the inflammation can also affect your chin, forehead, and eyelids.

Nobody knows for sure what causes rosacea, but it is believed to be caused by abnormalities in the small blood vessel just beneath the surface of the skin on your face. In many cases of rosacea, some of these blood vessels can become permanently enlarged, causing them to become visible through the skin as red or purple lines.

These visible blood vessels are commonly known as spider veins and can be quite unsightly if they occur in dense clusters, or on highly visible areas of your face. Unfortunately, while a number of topical skin treatments and oral antibiotics can help control the redness and inflammation caused by rosacea, they cannot mask spider veins once they start to appear.

How Can Laser Treatments Treat Spider Veins Caused By Rosacea?

Laser treatment is an effective way to reduce the appearance of spider veins caused by rosacea. During laser treatment, short, intense bursts of laser light are directed at the visible spider veins on your face. These laser pulses damage and cauterize the veins, causing them to collapse. These lasers are tuned to wavelengths that cauterize the veins without causing permanent damage to the skin above them.

Once the spider veins have been collapsed by laser treatment, they no longer receive the livid red blood that causes them to be visible through the skin. While this process may sound rather intense, spider veins are very small and do not supply significant amounts of blood to your skin, so losing a few won't cause any long-term skin problems. Your body will quickly replace the damaged veins with new, invisible veins.

Along with an older treatment known as sclerotherapy, which uses chemical injections to collapse spider veins, laser treatment is the only proven way to permanently mask spider veins caused by rosacea. While laser treatment is usually more expensive than sclerotherapy, it is also less invasive. It is also more precise and can be used to erase smaller spider veins that cannot be treated using sclerotherapy injections. 

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