Both vein disease and arterial disease are forms of vascular disease, conditions that impair your circulatory system. In that system, your arteries handle pumping nutrient- and oxygen-rich blood from your heart to your organs and extremities. Your veins handle pumping that blood back to your heart and lungs so it can be renewed and recirculated. To be healthy, you need both healthy veins and healthy arteries, so any form of vascular disease is dangerous.

That said, some types of vascular disease are more dangerous than others

If we measure the relative danger of these different types of disease by counting the number of deaths due to each, there is no question that arterial disease is more dangerous. Two of the most common causes of death worldwide are atherosclerosis (“hardening of the arteries”) and peripheral arterial disease (PAD). If your arteries become affected by either of these conditions, the result can be heart attack, stroke, or kidney failure. But to balance this, as vein care specialists in Kauai, we can assure you that there is a form of vein disease (deep vein thrombosis or DVT) that is so dangerous that over 300,000 Americans die every year from its complications.

Both are dangerous, so how do you know if you have vascular disease?

The answer is simple, and in either case, the same: “See a specialist.” They have diagnostic equipment and expertise that allows them to detect even the early stages of venous or arterial disorders. And it’s important that a trained specialist gets to use these advanced diagnostic procedures, because many forms of vein disease and arterial disease don’t have any overt symptoms that a layman can detect. Diagnosis of these conditions requires the specialized equipment they use, and the years of training and experience they’ve gained in how to use it.

Fortunately, the tests used by Hawaii vein specialists to detect vascular disease are fast, painless, and noninvasive. So there is very little reason to not call our varicose vein specialist in Oahu, Honolulu to set up a checkup of your own. It’s a “win-win situation,” because if we find you have vascular disease we can tell you how to treat it, and if we find that you don’t have it yet but are at high risk of developing it, we can tell you how to prevent it.