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By EMILY GOLD
Tfana-Dcascrat Staff Writer
Anew surgery performed by a
Warrenton surgeon is ending the
suffering of patients who have
painful and unsightly varicose veins.
When Linda Sommers performs this painless and minimally invasive surgery, she makes a small incision in the groin, inserts a thread attached to a tool into the vein, then inverts the vein and pulls it out.
Before this procedure was introduced, surgeons performed vein stripping, a painful surgery that requires many large incisions to pull a strip of vein out of the leg.
"It was horrible," Dr. Sommers said. Dr. Sommers said she never performed that surgery because it was so painful and invasive.
In June, Dr. Sommers introduced invaginated axial stripping, an out-patient procedure, to her patients in Fauquier County.
"I've been a general surgeon for six . years," Dr. Sommers said. "This has to be one of the most exciting and gratifying procedures to do. Patients are so grateful."
The surgery, developed in Switzerland, has been practiced in Europe since the 1980s and in California for about nine years, Dr. Sommers said.
Dr. Sommers learned about the surgery, which she said takes up to four r.nd a half hours to perform, at a conference in
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