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, May 29, 2008

Sympathectomy in the treatment of addiction

Pohjavaara P(l,2), Telaranta T(3), ja Vaisanen E(l); (i)0ulu University

Psychiatric Clinic, Finland (2)Tampere City Mental Health Care Centre,
Finland and (3)Privatix-Clinic,Tampere, Finland

Addiction problems are common in people with psychiatric disorders.
The addiction may be a primary or secondary problem.
The secondary addiction problems appear due to patients' attempts to
"treat" themselves with e.g. alcohol or excessive medication, especially
benzodiazepins. Social phobia is an example of a primary psychiatric
disorder, which leads to secondary addiction problems in about 20 % of
the patients.

Our patient had suffered from social phobia and its secondary problems
already from the childhood and she recovered from a serious alcohol and
drug addiction after successive treatment of her social phobia with ESB.