What is a digital sympathectomy?
Digital sympathectomy, first described by Flatt, involves stripping the adventitial layer from the affected common and proper digital arteries. Digital sympathectomy may be the only alternative to amputation when medical therapy has failed.
What are digital infarcts?
Digital ischemia results from an inadequate supply of oxygenated blood to digital tissue. The presence of digital pain associated with pallor or cyanosis of the skin of the affected digit(s) is the first clinical sign of impending digital tissue loss.
What is Periarterial sympathectomy?
Abstract. Background: Periarterial sympathectomy is a proposed surgical treatment for patients with refractory Raynaud syndrome; however, there is debate regarding the indications and extent of dissection.
What is digital pallor?
Raynaud phenomenon (RP) is characterized by vasospasm that causes digits to change color to white (pallor) from lack of blood flow, usually brought on by cold temperatures. Affected areas subsequently turn blue due to deoxygenation and/or red due to reperfusion.
What is sympathectomy for Raynaud’s?
The endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy (ETS) procedure is being used increasingly in recent years to eliminate the circulation disorder and pain in the upper extremities in Raynaud’s disease cases where frequent and severe attacks, tissue damages such as nonhealing digital ulceration and necrosis, as well as dystrophic …
What is digital gangrene?
Abstract. Digital gangrene in upper limbs may be due to systemic sclerosis, trauma, connective tissue disorders, vasculitic disorders and various myeloproliferative disorders or as a part of tropical diabetes hand syndrome which follows trauma. Peripheral arterial disease in diabetics commonly involves lower limbs.
How is sympathectomy performed?
Deep inside your chest, a structure called the sympathetic nerve chain runs up and down along your spine. It is the part of the nervous system responsible for the fight or flight response. During a sympathectomy, a surgeon cuts or clamps this nerve chain. This keeps nerve signals from passing through it.
Why sympathectomy is done?
A sympathectomy is a procedure to cut or block a nerve in the middle of your body. It’s done to treat problems such as severe sweating (hyperhidrosis) and severe facial blushing. During the procedure, the sympathetic nerve along your spine is cut, burned, or clipped.
What kind of doctor does sympathectomy?
Surgical Specialists Surgeons perform a wide variety of operations, ranging from removing an appendix to transplanting organs. Surgeons may also treat hyperhidrosis with local procedures or with a more invasive procedure called endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy (ETS).