Veins: An Overview

Weary legs that resemble a tangle of wire relates to a problem in the veins around the legs. Vein is a blood vessel that carries blood from various organs to the heart in the circulatory system of a body. The basic functioning of an element is to return deoxygenated blood to the heart. These are the essential tubes that may collapse when lumen or the inner space does not get filled with blood. The outer layer of a vein comprises collagne. This is wrapped in bands of non-striated muscles while its interior is lined with a thin layer of cells known as endothelial cells. The precise location of veins is variable from person to person.

Veins are almost similar to arteries but are lesser stronger than them. Like arteries, the veins have also three layers, an outer layer of tissue, muscle in the middle, and a smooth layer of epithelial cells. Smallest vein are also called as venules. The venules branches into larger veins which eventually carries the blood to the largest veins in the body, that is vena cava. The blood is then transported from the vena cava to the right atrium of the heart.

Veins comprise two vessels, that are the pulmonary and the systemic Veins. The former contains arterial blood that gets return from lungs to the left atrium of the heart and further the blood get transfer to the right ventricle. The latter returns the venous blood to the right part of the heart which empties in to the left ventricle, completing cycle of blood circulation.

The structure of veins are more than sufficient to hold the entire body's blood volume. The capacity would be reduced with the venous tone under smooth muscles through minimizing cross sectional area of the individual veins. Skeleton muscle pump returns blood to the heart. It helps to maintain the extremely low blood pressure of venous system. All veins carries oxygenated blood, although the blood carries by the veins is usually considered as less oxygenated than the blood carried by the most arteries in a body.

Various types of veins are jugular veins, pulmonary, portal, superior vena cava, lliac cava, lliac vein, femoral vein, popliteal vein, great sapheneos vein, periferal vein, deep vein, deep vein thrombosis, superficial vein, varicose veins, pulmonary circulation and small saphineous vein.

There are several vein disorders like spider veins, varicose veins etc. could be treated with radio frequency ablation, vein stripping, ambulatory phlebectomy, foam sclerotherapy, sclerotherapy, lasers or compression. Spider veins are small and thin veins that lie close to the surface of the skin.

It can be concluded that veins are the most important element in the human body structure that links each organ to another.