More Art than Science

Twenty years of innovation in treating vein disease and more to come

By Katie Schmidt  »  Photos by G. Frank Hart

Dr. Kamran Goudarzi knows his 40-year career as a board-certified General Surgeon and Phlebologist, paving the way for innovation in vascular surgery, might just contain some terminology that would go over the heads of the general public, including the writer of this article.

So, he graciously compares it to cooking.

“You can give a recipe to anyone,” Dr. Kamran says. “What makes a cook a good cook is experience. Surgery is the same — it’s more art than science. I have 200,000 cases and 20 years spent treating vein disease and constantly improving. Experience is everything.”

With two offices in the Wilmington area, Dr. Kamran was the first local practice to become an accredited vein treatment center and to implement lasers to eliminate varicose and spider veins. At first, plenty of naysayers wrote off these kinds of procedures as simply cosmetic, but as Dr. Kamran and his team have seen — it is often so much more than that.

“When I say, ‘venous disease’ you may think, ‘well that’s not bothering anybody,’” Dr. Kamran says. “But if you have bad veins and blood sitting in your leg at the end of the day, that is blood that didn’t return to your heart, and so your heart is pumping harder, working harder than it has to. Treating that improves the quality of life.”

Karen Lowe, the clinical manager at Scarless Vein Care who has worked with Dr. Kamran since 2013, shares the story of a young woman who certainly had her quality of life improved at Scarless Vein Care. The patient was in her twenties, a healthy mom of two, when she came in with veins that looked like they belonged to someone considerably her senior. Perhaps more importantly, though, the patient’s legs had intense pain and she couldn’t keep up with her young children.

“She came to us, and it changed her whole world,” Lowe says. “Now her legs don’t slow her down and she can enjoy her life. We have so many stories like that because we are incredibly oriented around patient-care. It is amazing how efficiently you can run and still work on the patient’s needs. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got a world of time to spend with each patient individually and that’s because when they’re the only person in the room, they’re the only person I’m going to focus on.”

Dr. Kamran credits a lot of the patient satisfaction found at Scarless Vein Care to his team, who he refers to as the cream of the crop. Not only is Dr. Kamran’s team stacked with talented individuals, it only takes a few minutes after stepping into their office to quickly realize this team is as high in numbers as they are in job satisfaction.

“This team is proud of what they’re doing,” Dr. Kamran says. “We are overstaffed, which a lot of people criticize me about. My argument is — if you’re going to do a good job and take perfect care of a patient, you need a full team. The patients are getting the best treatment they can here because of that. You can’t practice medicine if you are thinking about money, you got to keep your eye on the patient.”

That dedication to patient care is expertly coupled with Dr. Kamran’s years of experience and a commitment to assessing new technology without haste. Sam Taabet, who has known Dr. Kamran for 18 years and currently is the patient liaison at Scarless Vein Care, says one of the (many) reasons he respects Dr. Kamran is that he models a life of consistent growth and learning.

“Dr. Kamran is always into the new technology,” Taabet says. “He’s reading and learning and in tandem with that, we all get to learn with him. Within the last 20 years of his practice, there have been different techniques, different equipment, and he spends the necessary time to learn how it may impact the patient.”

Lowe echoes this sentiment by adding, “Any new technology that comes out, he fully researches it before we ever try it on a patient. It’s never based on whatever new fad there is; he’s going to do the research because he is dedicated to individualized care for each patient.”

The lasting impact of the recipe for greatness Dr. Kamran has cooked up is easy to see through patient testimonials, the gushingly positive reviews on Google, and simply by walking into the office to meet him and his team. He has had patients travel from across the country, and even Portugal and South America, to receive his unique care.

“This is a super speciality,” Dr. Kamran says. “You have to go from vascular surgery and then do some training in vein disease and then you’ve got to have total dedication so that you're there for the patient. I believe that vascular surgeons with experience in this field should really be the only ones attempting to do this. As a consumer, I don’t want to go to a guy just because he’s got a sign on his door. When I do my homework, I’m looking for experience.” scarlessveincare.com