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

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Rhinitis - relative nasal sympathetic hyposensitivity

The exact pathophysiology of intrinsic rhinitis is not fully understood. The generally held belief is that it is due to an imbalance between the outflow of the nasal sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, perhaps due to excessive parasympathetic or reduced sympathetic activity. In this study the nasal airway response to a predominantly sympathetic stimulus, isometric exercise, was studied in 19 patients with intrinsic rhinitis and compared with 16 normal patients.
The study shows that there is an abnormal response to isometric exercise in intrinsic rhinitis, perhaps due to relative nasal sympathetic hyposensitivity.

The nasal response to isometric exercise in non-eosinophilic intrinsic rhinitis

  • 1Department of Otolaryngology, Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Liverpool, UK
2Mr A. Wilde, Department of Otolaryngology, Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Prescott Street, Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK.

Clinical Otolaryngology

Volume 21 Issue 1 Page 84-86, February 1996