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

Saturday, April 19, 2008

The role of noradrenaline and selective noradrenaline reuptake inhibition in depression.

Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy. brunello.nicoletta@unimo.it

Depression is a common disorder that impacts on all aspects of a person's life. For the past 10 years, clinicians have focused on serotonin in their treatment of depression. This is largely due to the growing acceptance of the efficacy and safety of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in comparison with older tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs). However, evidence for a role of noradrenaline in depression has been accumulating for some time, beginning with the discovery that drugs which either caused or alleviated depression acted to alter noradrenaline metabolism. Until recently, the role of noradrenaline in depression was predicted from clinical experience with noradrenergic TCAs (desipramine, nortriptyline and protriptyline) and selective serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (venlafaxine, milnacipran). The licensing of reboxetine, a selective noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor now allows the role of noradrenaline in depression to be investigated directly. This review presents key data from the literature that support a role for noradrenaline in depression taking into account neurophysiology, psychopharmacology and clinical trial data.

Brunello N, Mendlewicz J, Kasper S, Leonard B, Montgomery S, Nelson J, Paykel E, Versiani M, Racagni G.