Medicine: Losing Nerves

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Sympathectomy, cutting of the sympathetic nerves, is causing the most violent arguments of all. The operation is now prescribed for a wide variety of ailments, from excessive sweating to high blood pressure. Nobody knows how many thousands of sympathectomies surgeons perform each year; there are an estimated 1,000 in Manhattan alone. Admittedly the operation is a life-saver in many cases of gangrene, angina pectoris, hypertension. But some sympathectomies may make men sterile. And because a sympathectomy reduces pain, some doctors consider it insidiously dangerous, e.g., a patient could have a perforating ulcer without pain. The experts agree that sympathectomy, like the other nerve-cutting operations, is getting out of hand.