Chronic pain after surgery has until recently been a neglected topic. The extent of the problem first came to light in a survey of patients attending pain clinics in Scotland and the north of England.17 This survey showed that about 20% of patients attending chronic pain clinics implicated surgery as one of the causes of their chronic pain and, in about half of these, it was the sole cause. An extensive literature search failed to produce any references on the general topic of chronic pain after surgery. There were, however, almost 400 references on chronic pain after specific operations, such as mastectomy, cholecystectomy and thoracotomy. The information from this literature search formed the basis of a chapter, entitled ‘Chronic postsurgical pain’,33 in Epidemiology of Pain, edited by I. K. Crombie and published by the IASP Press in 1999.
http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/87/1/88?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=sympathectomy&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=20&resourcetype=HWCIT