The surgical treatment of axillary hyperhidrosis

Axillary hyperhidrosis is a common condition and young people often suffer unnecessarily for many years in spite of the availability of good surgical methods for cure. We describe our own modification of Pettersson and Strömbäck's (1970) method of excision of the sweat glands. During the years 1972-6 218 axillary operations have been performed on 109 patients at the surgical clinic in Västerås for axillary hyperhidrosis. We reviewed 104 of these and found that 71 patients were completely satisfied and only 7 unsatisfied. Twelve patients wanted to be reoperated either because they still sweated or because they were unhappy with their scars. Thus, we found that overall the surgical methods are safe, simple and give good results.