Talk:Endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy

to Do
History of sympathectomy 1890-2004

Variations on ETS techniques cutting, clamping, burning, sympathectomy, ganglionectomy, various T-levels

Who's who of ETS Telaranta, Lin, Reisfeld, Garza, Nielson, Fischel, Drott, Claes, Meyer, et al

Glossary of terms ETS, ESB, ETS-C, compensatory hyperhidrosis,

Number of surgeries
As for the amount of surgeries performed all I could find is this link "Several thousand procedures are performed on a yearly basis worldwide"--Clawed 08:31, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Disorder?

 * considers ETS to be a "nerurocardiologic disorder"

How could the NIH consider the ETS procedure to be a a disorder? Do they consider the results of the procedure to be a disorder? If so, we need a link to support that claim. AxelBoldt 19:28, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I searched and searched and found nothing to back that statement up. I will remove it from the article. If by chance someone does find something to back up this claim they can add it back to the article--Clawed 10:57, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I, Alexander Baker (songboy1234), an ETS surgery patient, was studied under the autonomic failure protocol of David Goldstein, M.D. Ph.D. in Nov 2004 at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Many other ETS patients have been through it as well. While there, I was given a book listing all the reasearch programs at NIH. Sympathectomy is listed right along side Parkinson's disease, etc as a "neurocadriologic disorder". See a scan of the book cover and relevant page here http://www.truthaboutets.com/Pages/NIH.html

69.228.47.7 16:07, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

hidrosiscure site
I removed the 5 links to http://www.hidrosiscure.com/index.htm

I don't know who is behind this site, but it is idiotic, e.g. "Sympathectomy is sometimes used to treat facial sweating, although most patiets don't respond wel to the idea of having surgery perfomed on their face. " 69.228.47.7 16:07, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

A surgeon or somebody working for this surgeon (Reisfeld) keeps inserting links to his website: ^ "The Center for Hyperhidrosis. Dr. Reisfeld, world renowned expert and pioneer, can help! This person is promoting/selling his procedure and has no place on wiki. None of the material he would publish could be called 'objective' or 'evidence'. Unless it is evidence that he is trying to get even more people to have a surgery done by him. Stop advertising here, it will monitored and deleted. Porcelina81 (talk) 07:31, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Comment
This article is a great example on why you can't trust Wikipedia articles. Please read the scientific literature on the topic instead. I corrected some of the many errors in the text (most notably the claim that "..Swedish medical authorities have not allowed ETS in Sweden since 2003." which simply is not true), but text is still quite bad and erroneous.

Swedish Health Authorities have indeed banned ETS in Sweden since 2003, Drs. Claes and Drott now operate in other countries. I have reinstated a mention of this, and added mention of the partial ban in Taiwan.

Please let us know Souggy what statements you find erroneous. They should be corrected.

A study has found that Wikipedia " is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopedia Britannica" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm

Please define 'scientific literature', so that we are clear on that. The 'scientific' literature published by the surgeons who offer the surgery or the 'scientific' literature of those who investigate the various effects of sympathectomy but do not offer the procedure commercially? Very different statements are being made by these. Which one is scientific?('Porcelina81 (talk) 02:53, 1 November 2008 (UTC)',,)

Website
A spammer keeps on inserting a website that consists entirely on a sparsely visisted forum. Contains no information. I see no reason to allow this link. JFW | T@lk  19:07, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Left cardiac sympathetic denervation / bilateral thoracoscopic sympathectomy
Usage of "left cardiac sympathetic denervation" and "bilateral thoracoscopic sympathectomy" as treatments for Long QT syndrome and catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia should be more thoroughly explained here. —  C M B J  22:57, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

History
Much of the history section can be sourced to:

The relevant page is visible at Google Books. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:34, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

No-ets.com is not a reliable source
I have repeatedly removed "no-ets.com" from the middle of this article. Supposedly, it's being used to support a fact in the article (the number of surgeries performed). It has two major problems:


 * 1) Every other source is enclosed in tags and listed in references.  The format of this link is simply not acceptable under the relevant guidelines.
 * 2) The website and webpage do not meet Wikipedia's standards for reliability.  No-ets.com is a biased, outdated, unreliable, personal website.  Many of the names are listed as solely "my estimate" -- a guess from a single non-expert individual -- which is not a sufficient way of determining this information anyway.  It was last updated in 2006 and covers only a handful of selected surgeons.  There is no reason to think that the list is either complete or unbiased.

If this webpage is considered necessary to support an unimportant fact, then the fact itself can be deleted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:51, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

The difference between upper back and lower back


A persistent, but unfortunately misguided, editor has repeatedly added incorrect information to this article. The misunderstanding appears to be due to a lack of basic anatomical information. To the right, you will see an image that shows the different parts of the human spine. The thoracic (chest) vertebrae are in the upper-middle section. There are twelve of them, and ETS usually involves a couple of the top five. Below that, you will find the lumbar (low back) vertebrae. There are five of them, and ELS usually involves the space between the third and fourth of those five.

The side effects that you get from E-thoracic-S are not the same that you get from E-lumbar-S, because the different surgeries cut very different nerves. The sexual side effects that have been persistently added to this article do not happen in E-thoracic-S. The named source specifically says that it's about E-lumbar-S. Please quit adding this outright error to this article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:59, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Just to clear it up: If you have not studied the ANS, you will make the error of thinking that the SNS is anatomically clearly defined, exact and injury (surgical in this case) to the sympathetic chain will only affect a well defined 'segment' of the chain and the body. That is a common misconception and can be easily dismissed by quoting from the many surgeons who offer this procedure. After all they had the opportunity to observe the incorrectness of this ...assumption. They publish articles in the medical journals, where they describe cervico-thoracic sympathectomy affecting temperature and sweating of the feet (!) (in one article in as many as 70% of the patients). If you perform a brief search of the literature, you will find that peripheral denervation/sympathectomy will result in CNS activation. Sympathectomy has a systemic, overall effect on the functioning/balance of the ANS/body. And if you google 'effect' and 'sympathectomy' you will also find that it affects far more than sweating on a small body surface/area - which is a common sales pitch by the ETS surgeons, but can not be supported by evidence - so that kind of pseudoscience has no place on wiki. Sympathectomy, even cervical or high-thoracic can affect sexual function, and also it can affect/alter digestion, immune responses, fatty deposits in connective tissue, bone resorption, synovial fluid etc etc. Pls use google..or PubMed... If you are in doubt about the local - systemic effect of sympathectomy, please ask someone who is trained within the field. (porcelina81, who could not find her password to log in) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.73.23.180 (talk) 08:19, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


 * If you can't find a high-quality source that says e-thoracic-s causes sexual side effects, then we're not including the information. I don't care what your personal theory is.  Wikipedia includes information that is WP:Verifiable and reflects the balance of reliable sources, not information that one individual personally believes to be true.  The rule is verifiability, not Truth™.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:27, 2 August 2011 (UTC)


 * There's a high-quality source that confirms a lawsuit regarding sexual side effects.

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/1720772.blushing_op_ruined_my_sex_life_man_claims/

Might be worthy to include mention patient's claim and lawsuit. I haven't found any denial of the sexual effects, but if a high-quality source can be found for the denial, I'd support including that too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.24.174.205 (talk) 23:52, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Merge with sympathectomy?
I'm wanting to remove some material from this article relating to sympathectomy in general, not specifically to ETS. I notice that sympathectomy appears to be a stub at this time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.24.174.205 (talk) 23:42, 28 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Seems that there is also such a thing as cervical and lumbar sympathectomy. I take it that thoracic sympathectomy is the most commonly performed of these. Furthermore, this article specifies endoscopic, which narrows the scope even more if there are other techniques. According to a cochrane review, sympathectomies can be performed open, endoscopically, or with laser, radiofrequency, or ablation. Lesion  18:37, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Edit Warring over External Links
I think it is proper to re-instate at least some of the recently deleted external links. http://corposcindosis.blogspot.com/ is not a "patient advocacy" site, nor am I aware that that is relevant in any case. Rather, it appears to be a site dedicated to "The Effects of Thoracic Sympathectomy in Humans", the very subject of this article. The "references" tab appears to lead to a great number of citations, most in the "mainstream" literature. Further, following the links in the article, I note that medical doctor Pascal Dumont has referenced the cite in his mainstream article.

The Mayo Clinic and University of Maryland are hardly "patient advocacy" sites.

24.24.174.205 (talk) 22:06, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Here is language from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:EL, about external links which can be included:

''Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues,[3] amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks), or other reasons.

24.24.174.205 (talk) 02:14, 21 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Let's also consider the language from WP:ELNO, which insists that we avoid "Blogs, personal web pages and most fansites". Blogspot is not exactly the most obvious place for a "scientific website", even if we accepted that a website on that subject belonged here and not in the article about subject.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:04, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi. I have had my link removed to www.etssurgeryawareness.org which is a cited source of information. Please can I ask why?
I wrote. "Also, a website 'ETS Surgery Awareness' has been created which includes patients detailing their side-effects." Why has this been removed. It's very useful information. CathF83 (talk) 21:27, 16 September 2022 (UTC)


 * For reference, see this discussion at my talk page for my thoughts on why I removed the paragraph. It can be summed up as a case of WP:Advocacy. Isabelle 🏳‍🌈 23:51, 16 September 2022 (UTC)