Symptomatic treatment of chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) with herbal medicinal products

With a prevalence of 10-15% in men and up to 25% in women, chronic venous i nsufficiency is one of the most common conditions afflicting humans. The st andard treatment for CVI is compression therapy, but compliance is often po or. Therefore amongst the therapeutic approaches available phlebotropic dru gs are proposed to treat signs and symptoms of CVI and to prevent worsening of the disease. This survey presents a summary of herbal drugs that curren tly are advocated for the treatment of CVI: horse chestnut seed, root of bu tcher's broom, oxerutins, and the flavonoid fraction diosmin/hesperidin, To a large degree the biochemical and molecular-pharmacological mechanisms - enzyme-inhibiting activity and preventing leucocyte activation - of the dif ferent active compounds of these drugs seem to be similar. The available cl inical data of recent clinical studies with these drugs demonstrate, that t he extent of oedema reduction is equivalent to therapeutic results achieved by compression measures; furthermore, combined treatment with compression therapy shows a better clinical benefit compared with treatment of either a lone.