Question:
Is obesity a factor in performing ETS (hands) or ELS (feet) surgery?

Obviously obesity plays a role not only with the amount of sweating the patient has but also with the technical challenge of doing any operation on an obese person. Patients who are obese have more sweat glands per square inch than a non-obese person. An obese person has more overall body surface.

Any operation on an obese person creates a challenge both from the anesthesia point of view as well as on the technical aspect of the procedure itself. For example the sympathetic chains in the chest or in the lumbar region are covered with more fatty tissue in an obese person making the isolation of the nerve difficult or sometimes even imprecise to proceed with a safe operation.

Obesity does not exclude you from doing the procedure but it may have an impact. Each case should be discussed with the surgeon doing the procedure.