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, October 30, 2008

Sympathectomy increases total body perspiration, not decreases it

Performing thoracoscopic T2-T3 sympathectomy for PPH affects the total body sweating response to heat.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11193740
Kopelman D, Assalia A, Ehrenreich M, Ben-Amnon Y, Bahous H, Hashmonai M.

Department of Surgery B, Rambam Medical Center and Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa.