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

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Ethanol-induced cardiac hypertrophy: effects of peripheral sympathectomy


Increases in relative cardiac weight were evident in hearts from sympathectomized animals after 4 days of sympathectomy, and this change reached significance in the hearts from 6-hydroxydopamine-treated rats after a further 2 days on the control diet. Hearts from animals exposed to ethanol showed a marked, rapid development of cardiomegaly; after 24 h there was an increased mass of some 17%, which was sustained over the remaining 24-h period. The proportion of cardiac protein did not differ in the large hearts from ethanol-treated animals and those from their controls, hence myocardial oedema could not account for the increase in weight.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2966664