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

Monday, June 30, 2008

Sympathectomy - impaired wound healing

The involvement of peripheral nerves in dermal wound healing, particularly in the inflammatory response has not been extensively studied. Therefore, this study was performed to examine the role of peripheral nerves in the healing of rat skin linear incisions. We report that chemical sympathectomy with 6-hydroxydopamine significantly impaired wound healing as measured on days 7, 11, and 14 postsurgery (by day 14, 48% of the sympathectomized rats were healed in contrast with 84% of the controls; p = 0.0104)...
These results support the hypothesis that sympathetic efferents are important for wound healing. Unlike previous research, which showed that peripheral nerves influence ischemic skin flaps, we are the first to demonstrate a role for peripheral nerves in the healing of skin incisions. Because inflammation is an important step in cutaneous wound healing, we propose that a reduction of neurogenic inflammation caused by sympathectomy may explain the impaired wound healing that we observed in our study.
Kim LR, Whelpdale K, Zurowski M, Pomeranz B.

Departments of Physiology and Zoology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9776863