Surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome may be hazardous to your health.

We are reporting five patients who suffered serious injuries from surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome, which has been a controversial subject from many aspects. Many argue that it is much overdiagnosed and overtreated. The term "disputed thoracic outlet syndrome" has recently been applied to the majority of cases in which there are little or no clinical findings. The much more rare true neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome does have associated neurologic and electrical findings. Recently, the use and misuse of electrodiagnostic studies in the diagnosis of disputed thoracic outlet syndrome has been discussed in the literature. The cases that we are reporting are especially tragic because the elective surgeries were performed in patients who had little or no clinical abnormalities on examination prior to the surgery.