[Esophageal motility in health and disease].

The development of small sensitive pressure-detecting devices for the accurate and continuous registration of esophageal pressures has revived interest in the mechanism of deglutition in the normal man and in his disease states. As a result of the application of these new techniques to the study of esophageal motility and the correlation of physiologic, pharmacologic, and anatomic data, new interpretations of dysphagia in certain disease states are now available. It is the purpose of this paper to review these newer developments as they pertain to esophageal motility in health and disease.