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

Friday, January 2, 2009

Sympathectomy Attenuates the Maintenance but Not Initiation of L-NAME– Induced Hypertension

We measured intra-arterial pressure in conscious, unrestrained rats with and without guanethidine-induced sympathectomy during varying durations of intravenous N-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME). The major new finding is that sympathectomy had no effect on the hypertensive response to bolus injections of L-NAME but in the same rats it produced a greater than 50% attenuation in the hypertension seen after 6 days of continuous L-NAME (change in mean arterial pressure, 23±4 versus 55±4 mm Hg,
P<.01, sympathectomy versus control). Using 8-hour infusions of L-NAME, we found that 60 minutes was the minimum time required for detecting a sympathectomy-sensitive component of L-NAME–induced hypertension. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the magnitude of this component increases further between 8 hours to 6 days of continuous L-NAME: it accounted for only 18% of the total hypertensive response at 8 hours but 61% after 6 days. From these experiments, we conclude that the importance of the sympathetic system in the pathogenesis of L-NAME–induced hypertension accrues slowly over hours and days, and thus its importance can be overlooked by focusing on the initial phase of the hypertension. (Hypertension. 1997;30[part 1]:64-70.) Sander, Mikael; Hansen, Jim; Victor, Ronald G.