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, February 18, 2011

The practice of surgical and chemical sympathectomy for neuropathic pain and CRPS is based on very little high quality evidence

Sympathectomy should be used cautiously in clinical practice, in carefully selected patients, and probably only after failure of other treatment options.
This review is an update on 'Sympathectomy for neuropathic pain' originally published in Issue 2, 2003.
Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2010 Jul 7;(7):CD002918.