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Hi Chickpea,

I think it is very compassionate of you to take an interest in the plight of those of us who suffer as a result of this surgery and were not provided full/honest disclosure of the risks. And, despite your own happy outcome, I think you are justified in any anger you may have for misleading information you received prior to consenting to surgery.

However, I suspect that confronting your surgeon with this information will be fruitless and mostly futile. There is no independent oversight of what gets disclosed to patients. The surgeons decide what gets disclosed and, like any other individual selling a product or service, they disclose the minimum amount of information they can get away with and nothing more.

Although the spirit of informed consent dictates that they disclose all of the known risks, in practice, the laws allow them to pick and choose. The vast majority of surgeons performing this procedure have decided not to disclosed many well established side effects such as decreased heart rate and widespread anhidrosis. If confronted in court with this lack of disclosure, they would simply state that those side effects are not "clinically important" and most juries will side with the surgeons because society has deemed physicians to be the only "experts" on these matters.

Furthermore, they can pick and choose which studies they choose to cite. For example, if you confront your surgeon with a study where 40% of the patients regretted the surgery, he'll likely tell that his "personal experience" is much different. Or, he might, as many surgeons do, claim that his technique is superior to other surgeons and he gets better results. He doesn't have to prove it. He's the surgeon and 99% of society will accept his claims without question.

Some surgeons will look you straight in the face and make claims that defy fundamental physical laws.

For example, most surgeons fail to advise patients that a common outcome includes the complete loss of the ability to perspire on nearly one-third of the body -- including the head which is the body's main radiator. I've seen ETS surgeons go on record with the utterly absurd claim that this result does not hamper the body's ability to cool itself. That claim can be proven false in an experiment a twelve-year-old could understand. But, hey, they're the "experts" and I'm just some whiny patient. The laws of physics be damned.

Anyway, I'm rambling. I don't want to discourage you from your mission. I just want you to prepare yourself for the denial and scoffing you will likely encounter. Not all surgeons are smug, insufferable know-it-alls who believe that laymen are incapable of understanding the science underlying the treatments they administer, but a lot of them are. So, don't be too upset or surprised if your protestations are met with rolling eyes and dismissals.