Ten-year data from the randomized HELP trial show that, while both endothermal ablation and conventional surgery are effective treatments for great saphenous varicose veins at 10 years, the former was associated with superior clinical and quality-of-life (QoL) outcomes. These findings have been published in the British Journal of Surgery (BJS).
First author Abduraheem H. Mohamed, senior author Daniel Carradice, MBChB, both from Hull University Teaching Hospitals and Hull York Medical School in Hull, England, and colleagues reported that they obtained data for 206 of a total of 280 patients (73.6%) at 10 years, revealing that both the ablation and surgery groups retained significant QoL improvement compared with pretreatment levels, as assessed by the Aberdeen Varicose Vein Questionnaire (AVVQ), Short Form 36 (SF-36) and EQ-5D, with a p value of less than 0.001.
