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'Sweaty palms syndrome' can be cured by surgery

by Medindia Content Team on Aug 27 2001 6:25 PM

Hyperhidrosis is a debilitating condition that causes excessive sweating of the hands and feet.These people look like they have just run their hands under a faucet and have not dried them.These people look like they have just run their hands under a faucet and have not dried them.

One person in 500 suffers from hyperhidrosis, the cause of which is unknown.

Dr. Steven M. Keller of Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, New York, who has performed about 250 surgeries to correct the sweating disorder presented the results of a quality of life survey of 71 patients who received the treatment at the International Symposium of Sympathetic Surgery held in Helsinki, Finland.

These patients were submitted to a questionnaire about the amount of stress they experienced in their daily life as a consequence of the constant sweating before surgery, and again at 2 weeks, 6 months and 1 year after surgery.

On a scale of 1 through 10, with 10 signifying the most severe stress, the patients' average score was 6.85 before surgery,which dropped to1.79 in just 2 weeks after surgery.

Recent surgical advances allow surgeons to operate through incisions about a half-inch long made in the armpit. A tiny scope with a TV camera is inserted into the incision and moved along the chest until it reaches the nerve associated with excessive sweating. The probe is also fitted with a cutter that is used to sever the nerve, thus stopping the signal from the brain to the hands.

Since the nerves to the feet take a different route, the feet often continue to sweat after surgery.The side effects of such surgery are compensatory sweating on the abdomen, back or thighs, but this sweating is often not nearly as severe as was experienced on the hands.

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