At this point, I am not considering any TOS surgery because CCI and my upper cervical issue is bigger issue for me.
If your issues began that long ago with throwing and the heaviness you feel ( heaviness could mean nerve damage or compression ), I wonder if you may have some brachial plexus injuries. I am not sure if decompression surgery would fix it… although neurolysis is part of scar tissue removal common with this surgery it seems and nerve injuries takes very long time to regrow I read, like 1 mm per day if it can recover. If you can can you consult for brachial plexus injuries in addition to get a more comprehensive situation awareness? Can you do the Beighton score test (you can find it online and evaluate on your own)to see if you have hyper mobility? I read it’s not rare baseball players have the TOS issues or swimmers but if you are predisposed by hyper mobility, not sure what that means in terms of retaining stability after rib resection and scalene removals. All of the PTs I have met were against the surgery. I am due for MGH in July with Dr Donahue but Botox scares me because of my hyper mobility and my recent experience with Botox for cervical dystonia making my CCI much worse. I am hoping PICL procedure will put me in a better place by that appointment time so if I must, it can give better evaluation results. I am mostly counting on MGH expertise because my anatomy is already compromised with past lung surgery which resulted in right lung hyper expansion and cardiomedstinal shift to the left. Likely rib resection is not an option due to this because they push the lung out of the way to remove the rib from your under arm and I don’t have another lung to sustain me while. So my likely surgical option might be scalenectomy but I also met a girl who developed CCI after scalenectomy….
It’s complicated. Will see what Dr Donahue’s opinion would be.
My understanding of TOS surgery is decompressing what is abnormally compressing on nerve or vein. The 74% success rate is probably due to the difficulty of identifying the compressed locations?
One doctor also told me that a few repeat of Botox sometimes relieves the compression permanently but that probably depends on target location…
I am sorry I am probably confusing you more. I just don’t want anymore surgeries with long term negative effects but that varies person to person. Surgeries are making damage to fix something. Sometimes you need it, sometimes you can do without. Sometimes you never know.