Surgery- The Up and Coming

Well, here's a little bit of a secret:
On April 25th I had an Endoscopic Thoracic Sympathectomy (ETS). This is an innovative and controversial surgery that involves making four small incisions on your side below your armpits. Your lungs are deflated to allow the surgeon to insert a scope and tools, they go in a locate the appropriate nerve (for myself it was T3) and they clamp it. Actually severing the nerve is a huge no-no.

I found this option after spending a lot of time on the web researching alternative options to the bank breaking botox (over the long term that is). This surgery is considered to be more successful for feet and hand sweating as well as extreme facial blushing. Underarm sweating can be fixed with this but it's not nearly as successful as for the other types of hyperhydrosis.

The doctor that I found was fantastic and put me at ease. I was really impressed by the questions that he asked and the fact that he wanted to make sure I had explored many options before jumping directly to surgery. The surgeon that I had happens to be the head of Thoracic surgery at the hospital that I went to as well as a teaching surgeon at one of the Universities in the area.

There is a lot to cover with this so I will probably section it into a few blogs.

I can't say that I advocate this surgery at all only because each person has to do their own investigation into the procedure, the doctor, efficacy, and side effects.