Excessive Armpit Sweating / Hyperhidrosis

Many people develop excessive armpit sweating. It commonly comes on in teens or early adult life. It also often runs in families. In many people this is a distressing and ucomfortable issue which can affect their self confidence and mood.

While some people can manage this with high concentration roll on antiperspirants many find that this is ineffective. This needs to be done at night for it to work properly.

The commonest effective treatment these days is to have anti sweating injections. This is the same agent used for antiwrinkle treatments.  We are not allowed to name the product because of government regulations on advertising, but the agent is easily looked up online. This is now subsidised on the PBS and the MBS schedules, so medicare now pays a significant portion of the costs. This can be repeated 4 months later if required. It is not permanent and often reduces sweating by 90-95%. It is common for people to have treatments every 6-8 months  . 

The injections paralyse the sweat glands after injection in the local area. This effect lasts 4-6 months or longer in many people. There is some minor discomfort with the needles which can in some cases be improved with the use of a local anaesthetic cream. Most people are totally fine and decide it is a small price to pay for such a level of improvement. 

If you want to use a numbing cream, that is normally applied 30-60 mins prior. The actual procedure takes about 10 mins. Usually, you will stop excessive sweating that day.

The procedure costs $580 of which you get about $210 back from medicare, or up to 80% off, if you are over the safety net for the year. You also have a pharmacy charge of about $40 for the drug. You will also be charged a consultation fee in addition which will vary depending on if you want to discuss other conditions as well. A valid referral is required to access the medicare rebate. If you want numbing cream, using ours is $25 additional

While these can also be badly affected areas for sweating, treatment options here are much more difficult. They are also not subsidised by medicare and while these injections can work in these areas you commonly need nerve blocks and the process becomes very expensive, so we do not offer treatment to these areas at our practice.

If you have never had this before we suggest you book a consultation to discuss this prior to the treatment. 

If you have had it before and know what to expect, please make it clear to reception that you want to book in for the treatment and whether or not you want to have numbing cream  beforehand, which our nurses can organise ahead of time . We recommend wearing an old dark T-shirt as it can get greasy with numbing cream and you can get blood spots after the injections.