"Despite medical advances in the last two decades, the impact on public health of venous diseases is still underestimated. Diseases such as phlebitis, embolism, venous thrombosis, varicose veins or other diseases of the vascular system affect between 20 and 24% of the Spanish population, according to Vicente Ibáñez, President of CEFyL (the Spanish Phlebology and Lymphology Chapter) of the Spanish Society of Angiology and Vascular Surgery (SEACV). “The prevalence of chronic venous insufficiency is high and affects younger and younger people each year” continues Ibanez, with the addition that “in most cases it is not diagnosed”.
Elena De Benavides, coordinator of the International Phlebology Institute, economist by education and specialist of Health Economics and Health Organisations Management, has devised a methodology to make a treatment for these diseases, employed worldwide for decades, available through the public health service. We are talking about the sclerosing foam, a mix of gas (in tiny bubbles) and sclerosing liquid agent with tensioactive properties which, upon being injected into the veins, producing a spasm that forces blood to move, coming into direct contact with the endothelium (the “coating” of the blood vessel).
De Benavides has perceived the therapeutic potentials of microfoams and aims to set up mixed-service models called “High Specialisation Horizontal Platforms” (HSHP). It would consist of centres equipped with the microfoam technology and the specific machinery and trained personnel for its application, which could receive patients from public health. Her goal is to make this practice accessible to a high number of people which currently need to pay a great deal in the private clinics where it is offered, when in fact the objective cost of the treatment is ten times lower.
Public health, who shows some reservations to including microfoam treatments into its catalogue, this step would imply important yearly savings. And for the private system a new vast, currently unserved market would open its doors.
According to Luis Arbulu, financial investment director of Google.org and member of the jury of the TR35 competition in Spain, De Benavides shows a “great potential in the application of theory to practice” in a field that promises improvements in the well-being of “3,000 million people in the world” and “a global market of over 300 billion dollars”."
