I had a posterolateral thoracotomy 8 weeks ago, to repair my left lung following an infection that lead to pneumonia, empyema and a collapsed lung.
Although I'm no longer in serious pain, I still have a large area of numbness across the left side of my chest and side.
Has anyone got any experience of how long it takes for the numbness to reduce or disappear?
Is there a burning sensation associated with the regrowth of the nerves? as that is what I am experiencing at the moment.

Hello VillaPaul001,
Welcome to the NeuroTalk Support Groups.

Have you mentioned the problems with numbness and burning pain to your doctor?

You could search for information regarding Post Thoracotomy Pain Syndrome and hypoesthesia. Hypoesthesia is reduced sensitivity.

I went hunting for you briefly. Burning pain is mentioned in many of the articles I just looked at regarding PTPS.

This abstract below from PubMed is not new, but it does lay out some time lines that may be helpful to you.

PubMed Article
Eur J Pain. 2001;5(1):89-96.
The morbidity, time course and predictive factors for persistent post-thoracotomy pain.
Gotoda Y1, Kambara N, Sakai T, Kishi Y, Kodama K, Koyama T.

You could do a forum search here at NeuroTalk as well. Just use keyword such as ' thoracotomy ' and that should bring up any past threads or post.

Forum Search Feature

It's a massive surgery and it might take some time to fully recover by the sound of it. 8 weeks isn't that long.


All the best to you.

Thanks so much for your reply. I'm seeing my consultant again in 3 weeks and he told me the numbness would subside after several weeks but I wanted to see if anyone had first-hand experience.

Welcome VillaPaul001.

Hello and welcome, happy to see you have come to be with us, it a great place to be. As you can see we have a great number and caring fellow members here, where you have find a supportive and relaxing place. Have fun looking into the different forums. Our shoulders are here for support in many ways.

Please keep us up to date on your condition. Again welcome, looking forward to seeing you around. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

Darlene