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, April 19, 2008

Sociosexual behaviors of female rats during and after chronic treatment with the sympatholytic agent guanethidine

Pharmacol Biochem Behav. 1985 Aug;23(2):267-73.Links

Sociosexual behaviors of female rats during and after chronic treatment with the sympatholytic agent guanethidine.

Emery DE.

Ovariectomized female rats were chronically administered saline or guanethidine sulfate, a drug that blocks adrenergic neurons and, when chronically administered, results in peripheral sympathectomy. The females were periodically injected with estradiol benzoate and progesterone and tested for sexual behaviors before, during and after the six-week period of daily guanethidine or saline injections. Tests for copulatory behavior included tests for lordotic responsiveness to manual stimulation and tests of sociosexual behaviors displayed by the females in a complex testing environment. The complex environment permitted the test females to control their coital contacts with sexually active males and their interactions with sexually inactive males and ovariectomized female rats. Guanethidine treatment did not alter lordotic responsiveness to manual stimulation but did reduce the frequency of copulatory acts engaged in by the females in the complex environment. During the first test in the complex environment following the start of drug injections, the guanethidine-treated females, in comparison to saline-treated females, displayed a lower frequency of lordotic behavior during coital contacts. The changes in behavior produced by the sympathetic drug, guanethidine, implicate the autonomic nervous system in the regulation of copulatory pacing in the female rat.