Veins on Hands

Don’t be vein: Anti-aging laser technique will help Madonna and Angelina smooth out the skin on their hands

She may still be able to sing and dance like she’s in her 20s, but in recent years the unsightly, bulging veins in Madonna’s hands and forearms bare her true age.

Now the 52-year-old queen of pop will soon be able to turn back the clock thanks to a new quick and easy, pain-free cosmetic procedure which can be performed in a lunch hour.

Doctors say the anti-aging laser technique – which heats and erases unsightly veins in minutes – could heap thousands of middle-aged women get back to smooth, vein-free hands of their youth.

The treatment, which costs between £2,000 and £4,000 for both hands, works by destroying the affected blood vessels and causing them to simply dissolve away.

Constantinos Kyriakides, a consultant vascular surgeon, was the first doctor to perform the Endovenous Laser Ablation procedure, which is also used to treat varicose veins in legs, on hands last year.

He said: ‘These very prominent veins are more of a problem for women, such as Madonna and Angelina Jolie, who are slim and toned because there is not much fat to cover the veins in their arms.

‘Unlike varicose veins on the legs, these kind of protruding veins don’t have any health implications for the patient, but because they are on the hands and lower arms they cannot be easily hidden or disguised and patients are often very self-conscious about them.

‘The treatment smooths out the veins by erasing them from view.  It is quick and pain free – patients can literally walk-in their lunch hour to have it done.’

Bulging veins in the hands and arms become more prominent as the body ages.  They are particularly associated with people who exercise a lot, are very fit and toned and have little fat under their skin.

Alongside Madonna, actress Angelina Jolie and IT Girl Tara Palmer-Tompkinson have also been pictured in the past with unsightly blood vessels protruding from their skinny arms.

Doctors begin the one-off procedure by first applying a local anaesthetic cream to the area affected.

A small ‘pin hole’ puncture is made into the vein and a tiny catheter – no longer than one millimeter in diameter – is inserted along the length into which more anaesthetic and the laser is placed.  The laser is activated and slowly pulled out of the vein.  The heat from the tip of the laser seals the vein closed, diverting the blood supply to other, deep, less prominent vessels below the skins surface.

After a few days and weeks the treated vein is reabsorbed into the body and disappears completely.

Dr Kyriakides, who has seen women aged between 40 and 70 at The Private Clinic of Harley Street for treatment, added: “The procedure is much quicker and less painful than older techniques, which involved physically pulling the vein out of the hand to remove it.

‘By making just a small puncture wound in the hand long sections of unsightly veins can be removed under local anaesthetic.  The treatment takes around an hour per hand to perform.  It is a walk-in walk-out treatment and patients can resume normal activity almost immediately.’

Married mother-of-two Denise Gray, 52, paid £2,500 for the procedure on both hands last August after hearing about it from a friend.

Working as an air hostess, she said her hands were always on show, but as she got older she became more and more self-conscious.

‘I am a naturally thin person and consider myself quite fit and active – I got the gym, run and cycle quite a bit’, she said.

‘But I just felt that my hands had started to look older than the rest of me, they were quite blue and veiny, and I was very self-conscious about them.’

‘I always used to try and hide my hands by sitting on them, but working in my profession, serving people drinks and meals, my hands wre always on show.’

Mrs Gray, of Wokingham, Berkshire, said that the veins disappeared within a few weeks and the treatment has made an ‘amazing’ difference.

‘It was so quick and painless, both hands took just over an hour to do in total,’ she added.

‘All my friends have commented on how good my hands now look, I’m so pleased I had it done.’