Interactive Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery

Some of the highlights.....

The patient with unilateral Horner's syndrome was discharged from hospital 10 days after surgery although he was aware of the risk of this complication, was so psychologically depressed, and had to be referred for psychiatric consultation


Improvement in quality of life, defined as completely dry hands, was observed in 96%

Extensive resection distal to the T4 ganglion can lead to severe compensatory hyperhidrosis [15]. Compensatory truncal sweating has been reported in more than half the patients, sometimes to a significant degree [14]. This finding prompted us to avoid ablation of any ganglia lower than T3


A few authors [5] have reported the use of selective sympathectomy, wherein the sympathetic chain is preserved and only the rami communications are divided to reduce the rate of severe compensatory sweating. However, the slight improvement was obtained at the cost of a high rate of recurrence. 