Minimally invasive thoracoscopic surgery for the treatment of hand sweating and Raynaud’s disease

Hand sweating is a fairly common form of functional hyperhidrosis of unknown origin. Young people growing up in subtropical regions are particularly prone to this problem. The sweat glands are controlled by the sympathetic nerves, and hand sweating is caused by unexplained sympathetic overstimulation, such as tension, excitement, stress, or abnormal increases in palm sweating due to summer heat. Raynaud’s disease is a condition in which patients experience numbness and tingling in the fingers or toes and pale, purple skin in the winter. The symptoms of Raynaud’s are especially pronounced when stimulated by cold, such as cold water. Patients with severe Raynaud’s symptoms may have atrophy of the skin on the extremities or ulceration of the fingertips. The medical term is Raynaud’s disease or Raynaud’s phenomenon, also known as arterial spasm of the extremities. The treatment of hand sweating and Raynaud’s disease by TV thoracoscopic thoracic sympathetic nerve trunk dissection has been widely carried out in major hospitals in China, which has the advantages of more precise efficacy, less trauma, safety and reliability, less complications and faster recovery, and is easily accepted by patients. Hand sweating is the most common indication for thoracic sympathetic nerve chain dissection surgery. The efficiency has been proven to be 95% to 100%. In our hospital, we use T3 or T4 thoracic sympathectomy, which has satisfactory results and fewer and lesser complications. Patients are usually hospitalized for 3~4 days at a cost of about 8000~10,000 RMB, and generally do not need to remove stitches, with satisfactory results and no serious complications.