Here's Your Best Leg Ulcer Care Plan

Are you in need of a leg ulcer care plan, but find it challenging to make frequent visits to a medical office? Well, here's some good news! When you call one of our Houston or Dallas area offices for an appointment slot, you can specify your preference for location, whether that's in our newest office on Wheatland Rd in Dallas, or at one of our locations in Houston, Katy, Clear Lake, Sugar Land, or the Woodlands. Whichever Texas Endovascular Associates location you select, expect to receive expert ulcer care from our highly experienced team.  During your appointment, you’ll be able to show us your leg ulcer, and discuss your problem, highlighting your prior vein health history. After that, you’ll receive a leg ulcer care plan, and we'll come up with a treatment protocol that you can follow with fewer trips back and forth to the office.

What is a Venous Leg Ulcer?

A venous leg ulcer, or VLU, is a defect of the skin that won't heal on its own, due to chronic venous disease (CVD). As one of the most serious complications of CVD, ulcers tend to be a chronic problem, with about 50% of patients seeing them remain an active concern for between 6 and 12 months, according to research. Now, there are many ways to help your ulcer heal. But, according to new research, focusing on adding nutrients to your diet (including proteins, vitamins C and A, minerals such as zinc and copper, and essential fatty acids) can help speed up your recovery time.

Clearly, healing from within can take time. As such, treatment plans will be delivered over an extended period of weeks or even months. And that means some patients may prefer remote care plans being integrated into their treatment.

Why Venous Leg Ulcers Respond Well to Remote Care

While we're newer to out-of-office care here in the U.S., this is already  a well-established practice in Canada, which has allowed physicians there to study patient outcomes. And here’s some good news: many conditions, especially ulcers, do just as well with remote follow-up care as they do with in person visits.

This is why we believe you can receive quality ulcer care from a distance: when you have an ulcer (an non-healing sore on your leg, typically the result of underlying vein problems) traveling may be difficult. But if you can receive remote follow-up care via telemedicine, travel is no longer an obstacle to your recovery. This means you’ll stick to your scheduled visits and stay on track with our team of vein specialists. And, by sticking to a strict schedule of care, we can also prevent future complications by spotting problems when they first develop.

And there’s this: for some people, coming into a major metro area can be challenging. But with the rise of Telemedicine, we can now extend our high-quality vein care to patients living almost anywhere.  In our books, that’s a very important development. Especially since, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many insurance companies now cover the cost of your telemedicine visit (check with your individual provider for details before booking your visit.) And now here’s what researchers discovered about ulcers and telemedicine

Scientific Findings on Remote Ulcer Care

In 2014, researchers in Norway compared two groups of patient outcomes for foot ulcers groups. Twenty patients received follow-up care via telemedicine; 120 came for in-person follow ups.

Now, get ready for the exciting findings: Patients in both groups showed similar healing times for their ulcers. And, in both groups, nearly identical numbers of patients were completely healed at the 12-week mark. In other words, if you need to receive remote follow-up care for an ulcer, your quality of care won’t suffer in any way. So, go ahead and feel confident booking an in-office appointmentbooking an in-office appointmentbooking an in-office appointment for your ulcer care, and feel confident that, following your first visit, we may well be able to manage your leg ulcer care plan via remote visits!

Sources: BMC Health Service Research