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 21, 2010

Post-sympathectomy neuralgia: hypotheses on peripheral and central neuronal mechanisms

Post-sympathectomy neuralgia is proposed here to be a complex neuropathic and central deafferentation/reafferentation syndrome dependent on: (a) the transection, during sympathectomy, of paraspinal somatic and visceral afferent axons within the sympathetic trunk; (b) the subsequent cell death of many of the axotomized afferent neurons, resulting in central deafferentation; and (c) the persistent sensitization of spinal nociceptive neurons by painful conditions present prior to sympathectomy. Viscerosomatic convergence, collateral sprouting of afferents, and mechanisms associated with sympathetically maintained pain are all proposed to be important to the development of the syndrome.

Author Keywords: Deafferentation; Central sensitization; Viscero-somatic convergence; Ectopic discharge; Sympathetically maintained pain

Pain
Volume 64, Issue 1, January 1996, Pages 1-9

Ectopic discharge in injured nerves: comparison of trigeminal and somatic afferent

Brain Research
Volume 579, Issue 1, 1 May 1992, Pages 148-151