Video-assisted thoracic sympathectomy: Literature review

Abstract

Thoracic sympathectomy has been effective in relieving hyperhidrosis in several patients, with quality of life improvement. The knowledge of the clinical picture of each patient, as well as the possible postoperative complications, are fundamental to obtain good results. Thus, we performed a review of articles from the PubMed database published between 2005 and 2019 that presented, as the main topic, thoracoscopy sympathectomy for the treatment of hyperhidrosis, with the objective of evaluating the current state of art referring to postoperative quality of life, surgical time and its complications. From this analysis, we verified the importance of the level of sympathetic ganglion chain section in relation to results. The complication, although occurring, did not reduced the postoperative level of satisfaction or patients’ quality of life.