The amount of compensatory sweating depends on the patient, the damage that the white rami communicans incurs, and the amount of cell body reorganization in the spinal cord after surgery.
Other potential complications include inadequate resection of the ganglia, gustatory sweating, pneumothorax, cardiac dysfunction, post-operative pain, and finally Horner’s syndrome secondary to resection of the stellate ganglion.
www.ubcmj.com/pdf/ubcmj_2_1_2010_24-29.pdf

After severing the cervical sympathetic trunk, the cells of the cervical sympathetic ganglion undergo transneuronic degeneration
After severing the sympathetic trunk, the cells of its origin undergo complete disintegration within a year.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-0442.1967.tb00255.x/abstract

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Australian Story2 (rant)

quote from the ets forum:
"I do realise there are sweat tests conducted after a reversal but my point is that doctors do not do these tests on ETS patients. Therefore how can they generalise and say that after ETS CS will be mild or severe?? They do not do follow ups on ETS patients and if a patient complains of heavy CS the doctor may see it as mild and normal CS for statistical purposes."

http://etsandreversals.yuku.com/topic/3016/t/Eastern-Surgical-Australia.html

My question is: did anybody ever made an attempt at quantifying the scale of the 'compensatory sweating" after the surgery? Is there an attempt made to measure the amount of sweating before and after the surgery? Surely not, it would provide the proof that Sympathectomy causes profound sweating. What else could be the reason for not measuring this very significant side-effect? And then, - based on what!!!? - are the surgeons making the sweeping statements about the % of the people and the severity or scale of sweating after the surgery? Or about patient satisfaction rates??? How are these figures made up? Surely nobody bothered to ask any questions from me...

Why are the surgeons not accountable by providing statistical information on the side-effects after the surgery??? Don't they want to know how effective their surgery is? If it is safe ?! Reliable? Does more good then harm???
My surgeon did not schedule a follow up consultation. If I would have not called him (which I almost didn't), he would have never been told about the side-effects I have experienced. Did he file a report on my condition/case? Of course not. It would harm the statistics. (What statistics?!)