Stellate Ganglion Block

[jjubbs]

Anyone have any experience with a nerve block procedure?
I've recently seen various pain clinics advertise the stellate ganglion block procedure as a method for reducing craniofacial sweating and this has me very interested. I'm going to phone some pain clinics in my city tomorrow to see what they say. Anyone have any experience?

Wikipedia:
Stellate ganglion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clinics:
Omega Interventional Pain | Stellate Ganglion Block
Stellate Ganglion Block | Louisiana Pain Specialists

How it's done:
Medscape: Medscape Access

Reboots the insular cortex:
sympathectomy - controversy: 8/21/11 - 8/28/11

 

[Lea]

Don´t do it. Don´t mess with your nerves, or you can end up far worse than you are now.

 

[Jezza]

I've read about this before, IIRC what they do is about the same as ETS, except for the face region of the body as opposed to basically from the waist up or whereever it is they cut the nerve nowadays for hands (Tx).

I'm unclear however whether or not the side effects for 'regular ETS' also apply if they burn the nerve just for this smaller part of the body and I don't just mean CS but also the lower heartrate, changes in bloodflow etc...

I suppose if you 'only' have craniofacial HH and there are good results in general it might be worth it for you, however if you have HH in other parts of your body as well I personally doubt that the risks involved are worth it.

As for me personally, my head is one of few places the HH hasn't conquered yet (knock on wood), that is, it tends to sweat a bit quicker than others maybe, but usually my head is fine while all the other usual HH spots are soaking. That's an important reason for me not to have ETS, since yeah...maybe my hands and pits could be dryer but from the waist down I'd still have this chilly wet/clammy skin and it might even get worse after...I'd not be a whole lo better off I figure and even then there are all the nasty side effects.

I also still think other new more effective ways of battling this crappy affliction (meds or otherwise) are still somewhere around the corner. Eventhough it's still much too little there has been more and more attention toward HH in the last decade or so then ever before so I'm hopeful someone somewhere rounds up a few HH sufferers, does a little blood work on neuropeptides that normally aren't looked for in blood work and finds the culprit. I'm actually quite convinced that if they would just do a bunch of different test on people with clearly defined HH it might not even be that hard to find out what's wrong. Nobody has really ever done it before (except one study by Karaca) so who knows.

In that light it is sometimes a bit crazy (even if understandable) to see billions and billions go to cancer research etc, while not only HH but a lot of other 'under the radar' afflictions that people are greatly bothered by their entire lives barely get noticed...The 'marginal cost' of quality of life improvement doesn't add up IMO.

Ah well...Sorry for the long answer turned rant

 

[jjubbs]

Thanks for the info, Jezza. FYI - as it seems you read a fair amount of medical research, you may be interested in a site I just discovered called ResearchGate. It's a social community for researchers to share their research with like-minded experts. Lots of free stuff.

 

[Jezza]

Thanks for the link jjubs.

Yeah I've read tons of studies about HH or sweating related stuff, if you're enrolled at at university you can get 'free' access to a lot of databases like PubMed, Wiley Science etc etc etc...I just wanted to find out as much as I can about it.

In the end though frustratingly there isn't that much more anyone can do than wait for 'the industry' to come up with new things that are either directly targeted at HH or happen to aleviate HH as part of a side effect.

I'm still kicking myself sometimes for not going into med school when I had the chance but even then the influence you have is bound to be limited, although it would have helped probably in the realm of ResearchGate.

As for now I'm just an economy student so most of the times the medical world is not going to take anything you say really seriously because you don't really have any real experience in that field (which is understandable, but sometimes hugely frustrating cause I think I'm smart enough to have a few half decent ideas and of course the biggest motivation I could ever have at this point to at least try and work on this a bit (even if i is just excluding some possible causes)).

 

[Soy Sauce]

If you're an economics student, then you'll understand why they don't dedicate more time and money to HH research. There's not enough profit in it.

Not enough people have HH for "the industry" to dedicate time and money to research that will make them less profit than finding a cure for something that more people are afflicted with.

My hope is that someone who has HH will become insanely rich (hopefully me) and then can donate money to HH research lol.