Leading the Fight Against Vascular Disease in Silicon Valley

When Experience Leads—Others Imitate

In Silicon Valley, people expect excellence—not slogans. At South Bay Vascular Center & Vein Institute, we’ve set that standard for almost three decades. While others chase profits, we pursue outcomes.  Our care model is simple and sacred:

One Patient. One Doctor. One Nurse.

Every patient is personally evaluated by a board-certified vascular surgeon, not an NP, PA, or a marketing “vein specialist.” At South Bay Vascular, doctors—not financial managers—make the final call on your care.

Because for us, medicine isn’t a business strategy. It’s a calling.


The Vein Industry’s Dirty Secret

Scroll through social media and you’ll see it: endless ads from national “vein centers” promising Harvard-trained vein doctors, celebrity legs, and quick, painless fixes.
But look closer—many of these “experts” are anesthesiologists, pain doctors, or radiologists, not vascular surgeons. They’ve traded the operating room for an Instagram feed and call it innovation.

Treating varicose veins doesn’t make you a vascular surgeon—any more than test-driving a car makes you an engineer. A vascular surgeon is trained to understand the entire circulatory system—arteries, veins, and microvessels—across every organ of the body. They don’t just remove veins for cosmetics; they save legs, prevent strokes, and restore life to limbs most others would amputate.


What Makes South Bay Vascular Different

We treat the full spectrum of vascular disease—arterial blockages, aneurysms, carotid disease, non-healing wounds, and complex venous disorders.

Our surgeons trained at Columbia, UCSF, Washington University, NYU, and Harvard, and our results speak for themselves: thousands of successful limb-salvage cases, wound closures, and restored lives.

But our success didn’t come from fancy marketing. It came from doing the hard work—day after day, year after year, one patient at a time.

We don’t imitate others; we lead.


The Silicon Valley Analogy That Says It All

You can buy a smartphone that looks like an iPhone—but you’ll know the difference the moment you touch it:

Precision, craftsmanship, performance—those aren’t branding.

They’re the product of mastery.

That’s the same difference between a national “vein clinic” franchise and a true vascular surgery practice. Both may promise results, but only one is built from the inside out—designed by surgeons who understand every layer of vascular anatomy and who’ve spent their lives repairing what others only gloss over.

You don’t entrust your heart to a podiatrist. Why trust your circulation to a part-time “vein doctor”?


Doctors, Not Marketers

At South Bay Vascular, every diagnosis and every procedure decision is made by a board-certified vascular surgeon. We don’t delegate your health to staff with limited training or chase profits with unnecessary procedures. Our team includes highly trained nurses, registered vascular technologists, and surgeons working in perfect alignment—an ecosystem built on integrity, not income. A model we pioneered; not something we copied.

We’ve watched national chains expand through financial engineering—backed by private equity firms that see patients as revenue streams. That’s not us.

Our success was earned by putting patients first, not profits. Always has been. Always will be.


Now Is the Time

As the year draws to a close, most patients have already met their insurance deductibles—making this the perfect time to schedule vein or circulation treatments before 2026 resets your out-of-pocket costs.

Don’t wait. Varicose veins are more than cosmetic—they can signal deeper, dangerous circulatory issues.
Our Campbell-based outpatient vascular center offers same-day evaluations, advanced ultrasound diagnostics, and minimally invasive treatments—all performed by board-certified vascular surgeons.

If you want authentic expertise, decades of experience in the community setting and not advertising gloss, you’ll find it here.


Experience Matters—And It Shows

From Campbell to Santa Cruz, Gilroy to Fremont, and soon our new East San Jose office, South Bay Vascular continues to lead the fight against vascular disease throughout Silicon Valley. We didn’t buy this reputation; we didn’t copy the model for success from another vascular surgical practice: We earned it—one healed wound, one saved limb, and one grateful family at a time.

Because real care can’t be franchised. It’s built—by hand, by heart, and by the hands of surgeons who still believe medicine is about humanity, not margins.

If you or anyone you know suffers from a circulatory illness; require dialysis care; can’t sleep at night because of throbbing pain in your leg; or has varicose veins or swollen legs, call us today to schedule an appointent at 408-376-3626.

WE CAN HELP!

South Bay Vascular Center and Vein Institute

Leading the Fight against Vascular Disease In Santa Clara County for almost 30 years.

LEG SWELLING: SYMPTOMS AND SIGNS

Do you Suffer From Iliac Vein Compression?

To answer that question, take a few seconds to consider the following:

  • Are your legs swollen? Is your left leg larger than your right?
  • Is it harder to slip one shoe on in the morning than the other?
  • Have you had cosmetic or other surgical procedure done and not gotten the outcome you wanted?
  • Are you a cancer patient undergoing treatment or procedures?
  • Have you ever suffered from a blood clot or (DVT) in your leg
  • Do you visit a wound care clinic with little to no success?

If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, you MAY be suffering from a well known, but previously difficult to diagnose problem called May-Thurner’s Syndrome.

May Thurner’s Syndrome, also known as iliac Vein Compression, is a condition where the main artery supplying blood to the leg pushes down or compresses the main vein taking blood back to your heart. In the illustration below you can see in the far right graphic a “representation” of this compression. One way to help think of what happens when a patient suffers from iliac vein compressions is to consider what happens when a car tire partially runs over a garden hose in your driveway.

If the hose was “on” when you drove over it, water will continue to come out of the hose end but the flow rate will decrease. In a similiar way, blood returning to your heart will continue to flow if you have developed iliac vein compression, but the rate at which it returns is slowed down, resulting in a pooling of blood (i.e. swelling) in your leg.

Chronic pain and swelling in one leg (especially the left side) may be caused by Iliac Vein Compression. This is a little-known but fairly common condition that can greatly impact your quality of life—and may lead to more serious complications. In fact, studies have shown that in a full 30% of ALL people, the left iliac vein can be significantly compressed by the right iliac artery resulting in some kind of leg symptom….aching, heaviness, and most commonly, swelling or non-healing of wounds in the leg veins.

Swollen legs ARE NOT a normal part of aging or weight gain. And it’s not something you have to “just live with.”

Leg swelling is a special area of interest of Dr. Polly Kokinos, and she has been active in doing clinical research to find better ways to diagnose and to treat this condition. To diagnose and to treat this condition and the potentially deadly side effects caused by it (Blood Clots or Deep Venous Thrombosis) Dr. Kokinos has assembled a highly skilled team of vascular ultrasonographer’s who have developed a specialized screening protocol to evaluate for Iliac Vein Compression. Using state of the art ultrasonic imaging technology Dr. Kokinos’ Registered Vascular Ultrasonographer’s use this new protocol to scan up into the abdomen of their patients to examine the physics of the blood flow in this area. If a compression is identified during this ultrasound exam, Dr. Kokinos is able to further verify and treat this problem using a super specialized device called IVUS (Intra-vascular ultrasound) where she can insert a miniuture camera into the actual vein to determine the length of the compression after which she can place a stent to “re-open” this compressed vessel to re-establish normal blood flow.

To date, Dr. Kokinos has successfully performed over 200 of these iliac vein stent procedures in her state of the art out-patient angiography suite. She has lectured extensively at major vascular surgery meetings on her approach and success helping patients reduce leg swelling, increase the rate of wound healing and return to a normal way of living and is seen by her peers as an expert in this technique.

If you are currently experiencing a swollen leg, have a non healing leg, foot,or ankle wounds or have ever suffered a blood clot (DVT) please contact our office at 408-376-3626 to schedule an appointment.

Don’t suffer from swollen legs or non-healing leg ulcers any longer.

We can help!