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, July 7, 2014

the pain is the result of the sympathectomy itself rather than the technique used

Post"sympathectomy neuralgia is a syndrome of pain in the thigh, often of a burning nature, 
which can occur after sympathectomy and typically lasts 2– 3 months. The incidence has 
been variously quoted as 12–35% after both open sympathectomy47 49 and percutaneous 
phenol sympathectomy.13 50 The fact that the incidence is so similar after open and 
percutaneous sympathectomy suggests that the problem is a result of the sympathectomy 
itself rather than the technique used to achieve it. In the past, some authors have blamed 
the spread of phenol from the sympathetic chain posteriorly to the spinal nerve roots for 
this pain syndrome. There has never been any evidence to support this claim, and the fact 
that open sympathectomy has the same incidence of post"sympathectomy neuralgia 
suggests that spread of phenol is not the cause. 
http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/87/1/88.full