After years of mocking former presidents for medical ailments, President Donald Trump was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency (CVI), a disease known to attack African-Americans en masse with minimal solutions.
According to ABC News, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shared a letter from Trump’s doctor stating that the president had been examined after people started to focus on swelling in his legs, which the doctor labeled as “mild” and “benign.”
Chronic venous insufficiency is defined as a circulatory condition where leg veins struggle to return blood to the heart due to damaged valves. Dr. Andrea Obi, vascular surgeon at University
of Michigan Health Frankel Cardiovascular Center and associate professor of vascular surgery at University of Michigan Medical School, explained the difference in veins.The larger veins, called deep veins, give a majority of blood to the heart, while superficial veins are found under the skin surface. “When the valves fail, meaning they don’t adequately return blood to the heart, the blood can back up into the leg, and that’s essentially what venous insufficiency is,” Obi said.
The diagnosis affects close to 40% of the U.S. population, but studies show that the Black community suffers the most. The Journal of Vascular Surgery
revealed African Americans showcase more advanced stages of CVI than the White and Hispanic demographics. Sixty-six percent of Black patients living with the disease are deemed as overweight or obese and show fewer cases of improvement.In comparison to the white or Hispanic community, African Americans have a higher chance of being treated in the hospital. While Leavitt claims Trump’s doctor claims CVI is common among adults over age 70, studies show African-Americans tend to be diagnosed at younger ages over other races—all blamed on an increased presence of ulcer debridement, defined as removing dead or unhealthy tissue from a wound to assist with healing deep vein thrombosis rates and hospital charges in Black communities.
Obi says most symptoms in patients are mild, with most having varicose veins, which happen when the blood stems into the superficial veins just under the skin, resulting in the veins becoming swollen, which can be uncomfortable and painful for those suffering. Patients with deeper veins may experience swelling around the ankle area, as seen on Trump, which can eventually spread to the knee.
In severe cases, CVI patients can experience discoloration of the skin. “When the blood pools down near the ankle level, you’ll get discoloration,
and it’s a brown discoloration…and that brown discoloration is the result of the iron from the red blood cells that sort of pools there and gets picked up by your immune cells,” Obi said.The good news is that treatment is typically nonsurgical, with doctors recommending compression as the first line of comfort, using compression stockings or an elastic wrap.
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