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

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Further news from Australia - action group

As a new development a support and action group has been set up in Sydney, Australia, that will act as a representative of the victims of the ETS surgery in communication with the government organizations (MSAC, RACS, ASERNIP-s) and Health Minister to negotiate the situation that needs to be addressed following the recent suicide of Tim McCarthy, who was disabled and devastated by the side-effects of his ETS surgery.
It also will provide support with the communication for the patients distressed after undergoing the surgery. They will provide information and links to other groups overseas. The soon to be updated Australian website can be found here:
http://ets-sideeffects.net/index.html

Study Finds Gaps Between Doctors' Standards and Actions

The survey was conducted between November 2003 and June 2004 and funded by the nonprofit Institute on Medicine as a Profession, a think tank that promotes medical professionalism through a center at Columbia University. It uncovered notable gaps between ideals and practice in the areas of self-regulation, managing financial conflicts and conserving limited resources.

Study Finds Gaps Between Doctors' Standards and Actions

Physicians Think They Should Report Errors and Incompetence -- but Say They Often Do Not

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 4, 2007; Page A08


and what does the Australasian College of Surgeons has to say?

ASERNIP-S has not conducted a review on sympathectomy. It was previously listed for MSAC to review (hence why ASERNIP-S did not review) however I believe instead it was referred to PBAC. I have no information as to what happened with this review although I recently found out that it was only looking at a pharmaceutical treatment. ASERNIP-S is only able to review the published evidence however our current funding does not cover conducting any new systematic reviews. We would be happy to do a full systematic review on this topic but this would require significant funding, in the order of $150,000. The reason for this is that we would need to examine all study types in detail, as it is clear from what you have provided there is an enormous evidence base.
All that I can suggest is for you to contact the federal government, possibly MSAC and state governments for funding to have a full review done.

In our searches we located a guideline paper on the procedure from 2007 which indicates that the procedure should only be considered in severe cases when alternative treatments have been tried and were unsuccessful.

The Australian Government relies on

The Government relies on the advice of the medical profession in relation to the clinical relevance of procedures already listed on the MBS. If the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons were to formally advise the Government that it no longer regards this procedure as being clinically relevant, the Government would take appropriate action in relation to the MBS.
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