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, June 21, 2008

Patients should be informed of the bradycardia resulting from sympathectomy

We performed 24-hour Holter electrocardiographic recordings in 12 patients referred for bilateral sympathectomy. Surgery was performed at two distinct times allowing for the study of the consequences of unilateral right and bilateral sympathectomy. Results. Heart rate was 77 ± 8 beats per minute before surgery on the 24-hour recording and significantly decreased after bilateral (67.8 ± 6.5 beats per minute; p < 0.05) but not after unilateral right sympathectomy. Consistently spectral analysis variables significantly changed after bilateral surgery but showed no right-sided dominance. Little effect of sympathectomy was found on the QT interval, which tended to decrease after bilateral sympathectomy. Conclusions. Patients should be informed of the bradycardia resulting from sympathectomy. No right-sided dominance can be found consistently with the random distribution of substellate cardiac fibers reported in anatomic studies.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=14386364