Compensatory hyperhidrosis is the leading cause of patients' dissatisfaction after thoracic sympathicotomy. The study aimed to reduce compensatory hyperhidrosis to increase patients’ satisfaction. A prospective randomized study on palmar hyperhidrosis, May 2016–September 2019. Twenty-one patients T3–T4 sympathicotomy and 21 T3–T4 gray ramicotomy. Data prospectively collected. Analysis at study's end. Focus on the sweating, temperature, quality of life baseline and postoperatively, compensatory hyperhidrosis, hand dryness, patients' satisfaction, and if they would undergo the procedure again and recommend it. No baseline differences between groups. Hyperhidrosis was controlled postoperatively in all patients. No mortality, serious complications, or recurrences. Sympathicotomy worse postoperative quality of life (49.05 (SD: 15.66, IR: 35.50–63.00) versus ramicotomy 24.30 (SD: 6.02, IR: 19.75–27.25). After ramicotomy, some residual sweating on the face, hands, and axillae. Compensatory sweating worse with sympathicotomy. Satisfaction higher with ramicotomy. Better results with ramicotomy than sympathicotomy regarding hand dryness, how many times a day the patients had to shower or change clothes, intention to undergo the procedure again or recommend it to somebody else, and how bothersome compensatory hyperhidrosis was. T3–T4 gray ramicotomy had better results than T3–T4 sympathicotomy, with less compensatory sweating and higher patients' satisfaction.
Background: compensatory hyperhidrosis is the leading cause of patients' dissatisfaction after thoracic sympathicotomy.Objective: to reduce compensatory hyperhidrosis to increase patients' satisfaction. Patients and methods: a prospective randomized study on palmar hyperhidrosis, May 2016-September, 2019. Twenty-one patients T3-T4 sympathicotomy and 21 T3-T4 gray ramicotomy. Data prospectively collected. Analysis at study's end. Focus on the sweating, temperature, quality of life baseline and postoperatively, compensatory hyperhidrosis, hand dryness, patients' satisfaction, and if they would undergo the procedure again and would recommend it.Results: No baseline differences between groups. Hyperhidrosis was controlled postoperatively in all patients. No mortality, serious complications, or recurrences. Sympathicotomy worse postoperative quality of life (49.05 (SD: 15.66, IR: 35.50-63.00) versus ramicotomy 24.30 (SD: 6.02, IR: 19.75-27.25). After ramicotomy, some residual sweating on the face, hands, and axillae. Compensatory sweating worse with sympathicotomy. Satisfaction higher with ramicotomy. Better results with ramicotomy than sympathicotomy regarding hand dryness, how many times a day the patients had to shower or change clothes, intention to undergo the procedure again or recommend it to somebody else, and how bothersome compensatory hyperhidrosis was.Conclusions: T3-T4 gray ramicotomy had better results than T3-T4 sympathicotomy, with less compensatory sweating and higher patients' satisfaction.
Successful re-innervation of proximal limb peripheral nerve injuries is rare. Axons regenerate at ~1 mm/day, reaching hand muscles by 24 months, finding them atrophied and fibrosed. Peripheral nerve injury repair is often delayed waiting for spontaneous recovery. This waiting time should not be longer than 6 months as after 18 months reinnervation will not achieve effective muscular function. When spontaneous recovery is impossible, referral too late or damage too severe, other options like a transfer from a nearby healthy nerve to the injured one must be considered. They are very successful, and the deficit in the donor site is usually minimal. The most common nerve transfers are a branch of the spinal nerve to the trapezius muscle to the suprascapular nerve, a branch of the long head of the triceps to the axillary nerve, a fascicle of the ulnar nerve to the motor branch of the biceps muscle, two branches of the median nerve to the posterior interosseous nerve and the anterior interosseous nerve to the ulnar nerve. There are many more options that can suit particular cases. Introduced in brachial plexus injury repair, they are now also applied to lower limb, to stroke and to some spinal cord injuries.
Brachial plexus injuries are commonly followed by chronic pain, mostly with neuropathic characteristics. This is due to peripheral nerve lesions, particularly nerve root avulsions, as well as upper limb amputations, and complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). The differential diagnosis between CRPS and neuropathic pain is essential as the treatment is different for each of them. Medical treatments are the first step, but for refractory cases there are two main types of surgical alternatives: ablative techniques and neuromodulation. The first group involves destruction of the posterior horn deafferented neurons and usually provides a better pain control but has a 10% complication rate. The second group provides pain control with function preservation but with limited effectiveness. Each case has to be thoroughly evaluated to apply the treatment modality best suited for it. due to iatrogenia [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16], particularly during lymph node biopsy [17, 18] or treatment of some malignancies [19]. The pain is chronic [20], persistent [7], constant [21], burning [22] and throbbing [17], with paroxysmal discharges [3, 6, 23], particularly upon gentle rubbing the affected area [4].The pain is distributed in the distal areas of the upper limb, covering several dermatomes, mostly the caudal ones [24] and particularly the hand [5, 17, 23, 25]. The paroxysmal pain is felt in the arm [26]. Allodynia, hypersensitivity and electric-like discharges are present at the border between the normal and affected dermatomes [17,[26][27][28][29], particularly between T 1 and T 2 at the posterior aspect of the elbow [26].The pain severity correlates with the magnitude of the brachial plexus injury [2,3] and to the number of avulsed nerve roots [2-4, 21, 26, 30-33], particularly when the lower roots are affected [24,34,35]. Nevertheless, Bertelli et al. [21] found that in isolated C 8 and T 1 nerve root avulsions, there was no pain at all.The pain does not appear immediately after the injury but a few days later [24] and no longer than 3 months after it [5, 6, 24, 26,35,36].The neuropathic pain can be associated with phantom [37] or stump pain [38] in case of upper limb amputation, or to complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) [6], inducing a complex pain condition rather difficult to control [19,30,31].Self-mutilation has been described in 5-29% of obstetric brachial plexus injury cases [39,40].The quality of life is seriously impaired with sleep disorders, family troubles, unemployment, chronic depression and social withdrawal [2, 5, 6, 17, 21,[41][42][43][44]. Additionally, the chronic pain is a further hindrance to comply with a good rehabilitation programme, impairing a possible functional recovery [6,45,46]. Among all the disabilities induced by the brachial plexus injury, the pain has been found to be the symptom that most negatively affects the quality of life [47].Treatment of this chronic pain can be troublesome, as the response to the different treatment modalities is poor and not all of them allow preservatio...
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