What Is Endoscopic Thoracic Sympathectomy?

Sympathetic nerves are an important part of the human autonomic nervous system (also known as the autonomic nervous system) and play an important role in regulating the internal organs of the human body. The purpose of sympathetic ganglion resection is to remove the sympathetic innervation of the diseased segment arteries, relax vascular smooth muscle, dilate blood vessels, and improve blood flow. The sympathetic ganglion fibers that dominate the vascular movement of the upper limbs mainly originate from the lateral horn cells of the spinal cord thoracic 2 to thoracic 5. Because the preganglionic fibers of the chest 1 travel up the sympathetic trunk through the white traffic branch and terminate at the upper cervical sympathetic ganglion, the postganglionic fibers are distributed to the head and facial blood vessels, sweat glands, salivary glands, and pupil dilated muscles. Therefore, to perform thorax sympathectomy, only thorax 2 thorax 3 sympathetic ganglion was removed, and thorax 1 sympathetic ganglion was retained to prevent Horner syndrome.