Case Knife

Are You Thinking About Surgery To Treat Excessive Sweating

Once you’ve exhausted most of the other treatment options available for hyperhidrosis, and haven’t found relief for excessive sweating, you may be forced to go under the knife. There are different surgical treatments that have been developed to deal with hyperhidrosis. If you have hyperhidrosis, the best place to start would be to consult your physician.

You should know up front that there are surgical options for excessive treatment that involve the removal of the body’s sweat glands to more serious and invasive procedures like ETS, which is short for endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy. The latter surgery is generally discouraged by physicians. This is because ETS is considered more serious and there can be unpleasant side effects such as compensatory sweating.

Local surgeries are procedures that are performed directly at the area where sweat glands are excreting too much sweat, thus excessive sweating treatment is needed. There three surgical techniques that are performed locally: excision, curettage, and liposuction. All three are used primarily to treat extreme underarm sweating. All options involve the removal of the body’s sweat glands. For instance, in excision, the doctor cuts out the affected glands. Curettage is similar to excision but instead of cutting the glands the doctor would scrape them out. The final local surgery technique is liposuction which uses precise suction to extract the sweat glands.

As stated earlier, dermatological experts do not recommend the use of ETS as a standard excessive sweating treatment. In ETS, the physician is trying to impede the transfer of information via nerve impulses from the spinal column to the sweat glands themselves. As a result, the surgery will effectively deactivate the signals so the sweat glands will not function.

ETS involves making an incision in the chest below the underarm and inserting a tiny camera. Once the camera is in place, one of the lungs will be collapsed to offer clear view to the nerve pathways so they can be eliminated to treat the hyperhidrosis. If ETS is performed, both sides of the body will receive the same treatment. In most cases, ETS is used to treat palm and underarm hyperhidrosis.

Compensatory sweating, which was mentioned above, is one of the potential side effects of endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy. It will affect parts of the body including the face, the back, the chest, legs, abdomen, and buttocks. Compensatory sweating is a condition that may end up being more severe than the sweating that led you to seek surgery in the first place.

Understanding more about the surgical options, you may better understand what surgery will mean to you. Again, surgery should be the final category of options you pursue for excessive sweating treatment. It is only after you have exhausted the other treatments like prescription strength antiperspirants, iontophoresis, anticholinergics, and Botox injections fail to achieve results.

Of course, if you are thinking about surgery to treat your hyperhidrosis, you should consult your dermatologist before making any final decisions. Surgery should be taken serious because it does have definite risks. It should not be chosen lightly, especially in the case of ETS. Your physician should be competent to explain all of your options so that you make the right choice. Learning as much as you can about the medical procedures as you can may save you a lot of future trouble and discomfort.

Case Knives