WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF [ETS] SURGERY?

There are some potential side effects of the surgery. The most common of these is compensatory sweating which occurs in up to 50-60% of patients.

The surgeons are using a medically incorrect and deceptive term, 'compensatory sweating', when they should say 'compensatory hyperhidrosis'. And these ETS guys really should get their numbers straight. We've seen everything from 100% to 1% and almost every number in between. In our research, what we haven't seen is one ETS patient who is completely free of compensatory hyperhidrosis. Not one.

One must remember that sweating is one form of regulating the body's heat. If the operation prevents sweating in the upper chest, back and arms, it is possible that patients will notice a greater amount of sweating elsewhere in their body in order to compensate for the lack of sweating in the upper extremities.

We are as to curious why they would say "If the operation prevents sweating in the upper chest, back and arms. . ." This makes it sound like ETS might or might not prevent sweating in those areas, when the fact is that ETS virtually guarantees anhidrosis above the nipple line. More importantly, the statement doesn't mention that the head and face will not sweat either, which can have serious repercussions on thermo-regulation, given that a large percentage of body heat is lost through the head.

This is called "compensatory sweating" and can occur on the face, abdomen, back, buttocks, thighs, or feet. While this appears to be merely a nuisance for most patients, occasionally (5-10% of the time) it can be severe and interfere with the patient's lifestyle.

This is very ambiguous language. Does '5-10% of the time' mean 5-10% of patients get severe sweating all the time, or all ETS patients get severe sweating 5-10% of the time, or what? The fact is, a significant minority of ETS patients, perhaps as high as 10%, consider their compensatory hyperhidrosis to be disabling, which would certainly "interfere with the patient's lifestyle".

And again, the author uses the term 'compensatory sweating' instead of the medically correct 'compensatory hyperhidrosis'. The P.R. reasons for this are clear: How can the surgeons promote a surgery to cure hyperhidrosis when the surgery causes hyperhidrosis?

A second potential side effect is gustatory sweating. Patients who develop this problem note increased sweating when they are eating. This occurs in approximately 5-10% of patients but is rarely severe.

This is accurate as far as it goes. But mentioning gustatory sweating, while failing to say anything about a long list of much more serious side-effects, is disingenuous to say the least.

Finally, there is a small but real incidence of Horner's syndrome (1%). This occurs when the highest sympathetic ganglion (the first ganglion or "stellate" ganglion) is damaged during the operation. When this occurs, the patient notes three findings on the side of the face where the stellate ganglion was injured. These include a slight droop in the eyelid, a small or narrow pupil, and the lack of sweating on that side of the face. This syndrome is sometimes reversible over a period of weeks to months, but may also prove to be permanent. Although the incidence of this is quite low (1%), it is a potential complication of which all patients should be aware.

The surgeons' discussion of Horner's syndrome is mostly accurate as far as it goes, but is still deceptive on a few levels. First, we object to the term 'findings'. A Horner's patient is not going to have 'findings', he's going to have injuries, or complications, or side-effects, or problems, or disabilities, etc. We hate to quibble over one word, but 'findings' ? Come on.

More seriously, to say that Horner's syndrome causes a 'lack of sweating on that side of the face' clearly implies that if you have ETS and do not get Horner's syndrome, then you will sweat from the face. The truth is no you won't. ETS surgery causes complete anhidrosis from the nipple line up, including the face and scalp, in most patients. This is one very important fact that is simply ignored. There are many others.

Also, the author fails to mention that Horner's syndrome comes with pain, soreness, dryness and redness of the eye, as well as the entire eyeball sinking down out of place. Still, the author does a better job of explaining Horner's than at least one ETS surgeon, who dismisses it as 'a little bit of a droopy eyelid'

Overall, with the exception of compensatory sweating, the incidence of complications or side effects remains gratifyingly low.

Gratifying to whom, we wonder? If compensatory sweating, gustatory sweating, and a slight chance of Horner's syndrome were the only side-effects of ETS, and ETS only stopped sweating on the chest, upper back, and arms, then the author's claim of 'gratifyingly low' side-effects might be almost within reason. It would still amount to downplaying the significance of these effects, but would be within the realm of the understandable.

However, compensatory sweating, gustatory sweating, and Horner's syndrome do not begin to explain what happens to people who have ETS surgery. There is a litany of severe, permanent, life changing, body-and-mind-altering side-effects proven to occur with ETS surgery. Hit the link and read them, and see if this list bears any resemblance to the explanations given by the Society of Thoracic Surgeons. Then check out the medical studies which document each and every side-effect in the list, studies which are readily availble to the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

In Conclusion: The author has utterly failed to give meaningful insight into the side-effects of ETS surgery. Because the surgeons make a lot of money on this surgery, and the documentation for the side-effects is readily available, we conclude that the omission of important data is intentional, the information given is deceptive and misleading, and that the entire presentation is nothing more than a sales pitch designed to generate maximum financial gain for the member surgeons, and is offered with utter disregard for the health and well-being of hyperhidrosis sufferers.