Psychological investigations show that more than 80 per cent information about a person come to others in non-verbal way, i.e. through her mimicry, gesture, walk, and appearance. A stranger look stops on your face: her (or his) attention is primarily drawn to your healthy, attended skin with its natural fresh complexion. What is it, complexion, however?
The natural tint of our skin may depend on many factors but the most important of them are the pigment concentration in the skin cells, the thickness of corneal layer, and the quantity and quality of vessels which run through the skin and supply it with important substances. It is here, under the skin surface, that the most dense network of thinnest capillaries is situated. Unfortunately, they are capable to play a bad trick on your face: they may spoil it with a painful net of red veins, or cover your nose and your chin with ugly scarlet pimples, or gather in a bright “spider” in the middle of your cheek. Such a flaming redness is not due to abundant makeup but, at some people with heart diseases, is often caused by blood vessels situated near the skin surface.
Demodicosis so often diagnosed by dermatologists may come along with acne rosacea; in such cases, dilated vessels and telangiectasias appear beside the pustules on the chin, nose, nasal septum, sometimes on cheeks, eyelids and forehead; the face easily turns red. When this symptom is underestimated, further expensive treatment brings poor results or often none. There are patients who try to deal with the problem on their own, systematically using hormonal creams; the results are immediate and excellent but followed by adaptation and inevitable relapse, in much more serious form. Furthermore, as a result of the long-term cure, hormonal preparations, topical as well as for internal use, cause the skin atrophy, thus provoking new vessels generation.
The vascular stars are typical women’s problem related to their hormonal background during pregnancy or menopause; sometimes they accompany heavy diseases such as internal tumors producing hormones and only petty part of them disappear by themselves.
Another group of generalized diseases accompanied by telangiectasias consists of systemic affections of connective tissues when besides the skin the internals are involved. The most frequent is scleroderma systematica, which makes the skin dense, lustrous and full of tiny dilated vessels.
The breast cancer is now becoming “younger” and progresses throughout the world. Ignorant about symptoms, women reveal their tumor too late… and continue to die of it. Meantime, the pinhead-sized but bright and quite visible telangiectasias appearing on the mamma should be considered as an alarm signal. This form has even its specific name: telangiectatic cancer.
Symtoms of basal cell epithelioma, the most common skin cancer, also include telangiectasias, which “blossom” on bases of pearl-pink nodules or on scar-like altered skin.
Children’s telangiectasias deserve a special attention. In most cases, one vessel star poses no hazard to the child’s health, but several “vascular spiders” in conjunction with periodical nosebleeds may indicate such a serious disease as hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia. The same dilated capillary vessels in stomach or intestine would manifest themselves in significant internal bleeding.