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, December 18, 2008

EFFECTS OF SYMPATHECTOMY ON catecholamine concentrations ...

Effects of surgical sympathectomy on catecholamine concentrations ...

completely depleted from the pineal gland. These results. suggest that NE in the pineal gland ... amine declines following sympathectomy. Bjrrklund et al. 4 ...
www.springerlink.com/index/QP13674817684227.pdf - Similar pages - Note this
More results from www.springerlink.com »

CARDIOVASCULAR CHANGES POST SYMPATHECTOMY

Short- and Long-term Effects
Pulse rates taken at rest and after effort were significantly
lower than those taken after operation, and the blood pressure
response to exercise was blunted. ECG tracings showed a sig-
nificant change in the electrical frontal plane axis and shortening
of the QTc interval.



Tel-Hashomer, and Tel Aviv University Sackler Medical
School, Tel Aviv, Israel, and the National Heart,
Lung, Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health,t Bethesda, Maryland

SYMPATHECTOMY CAUSES PARTIAL AUTONOMIC FAILURE

NIH Book: Sympathectomy is "Neurocardiologic Disorder"

SURGICALLY INDUCED autonomic disfunction

HEAT STROKE AFTER SYMPATHECTOMY

As you - I mean your body - will have no control over thermoregulation, and you will not be able to cool off from your head (the top of your head gets rid of 40% of your body's heat, but it will be unable to do so. Completely!), even small exertion will cause a major drain on your system. Effectively you will be cut into two separate bodies: the top part of the body will be in constant hyperthermia - overheating your brain..., and the lower part from the shoulders down in constant hypothermia. One hot the other always cold, because of the changes in the circulation, and the thermoregualtory dysfunction. Your head will not know how hot your body is, as the signals from the body going to the brain are cut. The adipose tissue has been denervated, so it will not be able to send 'reading' the body's temperature ..or to send signals... Because your head is constantly hot, it thinks, asumes, that your body is as hot as the head (would make sense....but not any more), so it goes into overdrive to cool off where it can, to sweat where it can: from the shoulders or nipple line - again - depending on the level where the sympathetic chain was cut. On the shoulders up, neck and face you will not sweat any more, - this condition is called anhidrosis, - your skin will become dry, brittle, flaky, eliminating the skins natural cleansing process, that happens through sweating. It will also affect the circulation of the scull and the hair growth. There have been reports of the changes in hair colour, in fact becoming ..grey following sympathectomy. Hair loss has been also reported.
The surgery is also performed in cases where they have to do skin grafting, in order to reduce the immune responses of the skin, so it will not reject the new skin. It will make your skin more vulnerable and prone to infections. In general it will change your body's immune responses and make you more vulnerable to certain diseases and conditions. Arthritis is one of them.

bioinfo.pl
Ann Thorac Surg. 2007 Sep ;84 (3):1025-7 17720429
Is previous thoracic sympathectomy a risk factor for exertional heat stroke?
Alan D L Sihoe , Raymond W T Liu , Alex K L Lee , Chak-Wah Lam , Lik-Cheung Cheng
We report the case of a physically fit young man who presented with severe, life-threatening heat
stroke after running a 10 km road race. He had previously received bilateral thoracic
sympathectomy for axillary hyperhidrosis at another hospital, and was known to have upper body
and limb anhidrosis. Thoracic sympathectomy can result in reduced sweating and disturbed
peripheral vascular and heart rate responses. Patients should be warned that these mechanisms may play a role in the development of exertional heat stroke.

SYMPATHECTOMY and the drugs you should not take

VISKEN®
(pindolol)

INTERACTIONS

Potentiation of the antihypertensive effect occurs with ganglionic or peripheral adrenergic
blocking drugs and in the post-sympathectomy patient (see “PRECAUTIONS”). Calcium
antagonists and antiarrhythmics (see “WARNINGS”).

SYMPATHECTOMY causing damage

The damage to the sympathetic ganglia, be it in the form of sympathectomy, chemical sympathectomy, and radiofrequency (all of these sympathectomies are cardinal sins), or repetitive stellate ganglion blocks are damaging (causing "Virtual Sympathectomy") and can complicate the chronic CRPS pain further rather than helping the patient.

SYMPATHECTOMY IS A FAILURE

CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida

H. Hooshmand, M.D.

CAUSE OF FAILURE AFTER SYMPATHECTOMY
1. Sympathectomy is analogous to the act of killing the messenger. The sympathetic nervous system has the critical job of properly controlling and preserving the circulation in different parts of the body, especially in the extremities. By paralyzing the system, the extremity will be more apt to have disturbance of circulation and is left unprotected from fluctuation in circulation.
Sympathectomy is similar to permanently removing the central heat and air-conditioning system and never replacing it because of malfunction.
Sympathectomy permanently damages the temperature regulatory system. The reason sympathectomy does not cause side effects other than ineffective control of pain as well as impotence and orthostatic hypotension is because it is invariably partial and incomplete.
4. Usually the patients that end up needing sympathectomy are the ones who suffer from ephaptic dystrophy. Sympathectomy in such cases cause a classic Cannon phenomenon. This physiological phenomenon refers to the fact that the end organ that is controlled by sympathetic nerve fibers will become uninhibited in its chemical dysfunction. As a result, even though the sympathetic fibers are not contributing to acetylcholine or become uninhibited with resultant increase of pain input.

In diabetic neuropathy RSD, sympathectomy dramatically relieves the pain for the first 1 to 3 years. Then deafferentation can Cannon phenomenon set in. As a result, invariably by the second to fifth year the patient ends up with a lot more pain. Sympathetic blocks repeated every 6 to 12 months yield similar results.
In patients who have had sympathectomy, thermography shows an increase of temperature in the focus of ephaptic nerve damage (Cannon phenomenon) with secondary increase of pain and discomfort.

http://www.rsdrx.com/sympathectomy_failure.htm

SYMPATHECTOMY IS AN EXPERIMENT

Article
Sympathectomy as an experiment in human physiology
J. Paterson Ross
Surgical Professorial Unit, St. Bartholomew's Hospital
A Hunterian Lecture delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons, February 3, 1933.
ABSTRACT

(P.S.: It is still an experiment! There has been no objective trial or study into the effectiveness, safety and efficiacy of the procedure. No real long-term study into the effects of the surgery. There has been one study that reported that 25% of the patients operated for palmar HH said that their original condition returned within 5 years. Remember? Nerves regenerate. The sympathetic chain does not. You might end up with the return of your original symptoms, plus the many adverse effects of the surgery (decreased heart rate, lung function, abolished homeostasis, inability to maintain the correct bloodpressure, high plasma NOREPHRINE, that has been associated with joint inflammation, arthritis, also: 95 % of the patients who underwent Sympathectomy ended up with Sclerosis within 6 years!!!, irrespective of the fact if they had diabetes or not, etc etc. )

article - cerebral damage, sympathectomy

Complications of endoscopic sympathectomy
Alan E. P. Cameron
Abstract
Four cases are presented in which complications occurred during or after thoracic endoscopic
sympathectomy (TES). In one patient inappropriate TES resulted in disabling hyperhidrosis. In one
patient laceration of the subclavian artery required major surgery. In two cases intraoperative
cerebral damage occurred. Training in TES is essential.
Copyright © 1998 Taylor and Francis