Plexus brachialis injury following surgery and radiotherapy for breast cancer

Five-year active follow-up of 236 breast cancer patients undergoing radical amputation with subsequent telegammatherapy showed in 21 (8.9%) of the cases development, on the lesion side, of brachial plexitis varying in severity and becoming manifest from 6 to 28 months following completion of complex treatment. The patients presented with the initial and leading symptom of progressively increasing diffuse causalgic pain spreading over the whole arm. Clinical findings corresponded to injury of nerve fiber interlacings in this zone, with distal parts of the extremity selectively affected and dominance of signs from damage to individual nerves. Evidence obtained by a variety of techniques (capillary microscopy, oscillography, skin and axillar thermometry, and the ''white spot'' symptom) indicated formation of a distinct trophovascular syndrome associated with the clinical pattern of plexitis. The complexity of causative factors in development of the pathologic process is pointed out: surgical intervention and postoperative period, direct radiation exposure of the brachial plexus, sympathetic ganglia and vascular bundle, as well as substantial fibrous changes in soft tissues. The treatment administered (pharmacotherapy, exercise therapy, physiotherapy) brought relief in a measure depending on the state of plexitis at the time of diagnosing