Varicose veins are extremely common, which means you will encounter them in real life and in exams, remarkably frequently. Fortunately examining the venous system is very easy and mainly requires observation and a simple handheld instrument – the Doppler probe. There are a myriad of other ‘special’ tests such as the tourniquet test, which are now considered obsolete because they are totally unreliable. It would be very unfair to ask you to perform them in an exam because they are never used now in clinical practice. The only people who would think it appropriate to include them would be ageing surgical dinosaurs who haven’t practised vascular surgery in decades. Unfortunately, such people still exist in exam contexts, so the tests have been included here in basic format only, just for completeness.