Telangiectasias are tiny blood vessels near the surface of your skin that causes skin redness spots. Many refer to these red areas as a spider vein because some telangiectasia linear formations resemble a spider web. And spider veins can present as red, blue. purple or some combination.
A couple of characteristic of telangiactasia is skin redness blanching (temporarily disappear) when pressed and a spider vein usually don’t bulge out like a varicose vein. Telangiectasias frequently occur in healthy folks and their skin redness is usually caused by:
Telangiectasias can show up anywhere on your body, but the most common sites for this skin redness is the nose, cheeks, chin, thighs, ankles and just below your knees.
Although spider veins are often not a health concern, in some they do cause excessive bleeding problems or their skin redness is associated with another health condition, such as:
- scleroderma
- acne rosacea
- spider angioma
- bloom syndrome
- port-wine birthmark
- ataxia-telangiectasia
- Sturge-Weber disease
- xeroderma pigmentosum
- prolonged use of corticosteroids
- Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber syndrome
- hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia
- cutis marmorata telangiectatica congenita
Again, having a telangiectasia spider vein or two is typically not a serious health concern and requires no treatment.
However, telangiectasia spider vein treatment is available should you find your skin redness appearance bothersome. Sclerotherapy chemical injection is the primary treatment on your undesired spider veins. And laser resurfacing treatment and intense pulsed light can be a successful method for treating telangiectasias on your face.