Case reportA novel finding in thoracic outlet syndrome: tachycardia
Introduction
There are many well known neurological complications of thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS). Sympathetic nervous system problems of the upper extremities such as vasomotor changes, complex regional pain syndrome and hyperhidrosis may be observed due to the compression of the sympathetic nerve fibers of the brachial plexus [1]. However, sympathetic nervous system of the heart may also be affected in these patients. To our notice, there is only one case report describing such a complication in the literature [2], thus we present another patient and further discuss its mechanisms.
Section snippets
Case report
A 22 year old woman applied to our physical medicine and rehabilitation clinic with the complaints of pain, numbness in her both arms, weakness in her right hand and palpitation episodes for the last 4 years. She described her symptoms of pain—especially originating from her right shoulder going down to the right hand—and numbness in the medial side of her right forearm as well as her fingers of the right hand. She claimed that she mainly suffered from these symptoms when she was working with
Discussion
Pure neurogenic TOS is a rare entity with an incidence of 1/1,000,000[4] where motor and sensory nerves, sympathetic nerves can be affected. Due to the compression of sympathetic fibers of the brachial plexus; hyperhydrosis, Raynaud’s phenomenon, Raynaud’s disease, complex regional pain syndrome or vascular insufficiency can be seen [1]. Gockel et al. [5] found out that heart rate values were higher in TOS patients than the normal healthy controls, however, in the literature irritation of
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