excessive sweating & hyperhidrosis surgery results (Facial Blushing, Feet Sweating) also known as ETS

The sympathectomy as its being done by most of the surgeons is very affective with curing hand sweating. The success rate is about 98% putting aside any technical or anatomical problems it would be closer to 100%. With regard to the facial blushing and or the facial sweating the success rate is lower and ranges around 70% . Longer follow-up studies done by Dr. Reisfeld and other investigators showed that with time the success rate for patients with facial blushing is even lower. It is our understanding that this led to the decision by Reisfeld to abandon at present ETS as a good choice for those the treatment of facial blushing and or facial sweating. There was a thought that patients who suffer from facial blushing/facial sweating as well as hand sweating will have better results when doing the ETS procedure for those cases with facial presentation but this ended up not being the case. In those cases there must be other factors which cause facial blushing and or facial sweating. The operation is also known to help with cases of social phobia, heart palpitations, and sometimes there are cases of migraine headaches which were helped by sympathectomy. This particular view is not shared by all surgeons and patients that fall in this category are advised to discuss it carefully with their surgeon.

With regard to the success rate of feet sweating it has unpredictable results. Generally speaking most of the patient will describe reduction in their feet sweating. In very few places around the world lumbar sympathectomy is offered as a treatment for excessive feet sweating. But this particular approach is fraught with side effects such as impotence problems, or blood pressure problems if it is done together with upper thoracic sympathectomy (ETS). This is the reason why lumbar sympathectomy is not offered by most of the surgeons.