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

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy is prohibited for patients under 20 years old in Taiwan

Patients with severe compensatory sweating after ETS must change clothes several times a day (some patients complained that they change as often as 10 times a day), resulting in serious impact on work and social interaction. Patients suffering from such serious side effects in Taiwan have formed a support group based on an Internet discussion forum to request the government to take this problem seriously. Starting in October 2004, The Department of Health, Executive Yuan, Taiwan, has prohibited surgeons from performing this operation on patients under 20 years old. To our knowledge, this type of support group also exists in United States, England, Sweden, Spain and Japan (Table 1).

ETS is a relatively safe and simple procedure. However the side effects are possibly devastating All physicians providing this service and all peoples preparing to undergo this treatment should know this well.
Min-Huei Hsu (10 January 2005)
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/eletters/172/1/69#1908