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, July 26, 2009

Neurogenic and non-neurogenic inflammation in the rat paw following chemical sympathectomy

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1723182?dopt=Abstract

Neuroscience. 1991;45(3):761-5.
Neonatal guanethidine sympathectomy caused an 86% depletion of noradrenaline in the paw skin and neurogenic plasma protein extravasation upon antidromic nerve stimulation was impaired. Sensory neuropeptides were unchanged in the skin after neonatal guanethidine and only calcitonin gene-related peptide content was increased in the spinal cord and sciatic nerves. The other observations (i.e. the sensitivity towards heat stimuli, the neurogenic mustard oil inflammation and the non-neurogenic carrageenan oedema) were similar to those observed after neonatal 6-hydroxydopamine treatment.