The patient was an obese housewife aged 50 years. The day her pharynx ruptured, her lunch consisted of chips and gravy followed by a steamed fruit pudding which she had made herself. To use her own words, she 'swallowed a mouthful of pudding unexpectedly'. The pudding seemed to stick in her throat and she was immediately seized with intense pain on the left side of the neck. She was at once awa...

During the fourth week of embryonic development, the rudiment of the respiratory tree appears as a median laryngotracheal groove in the ventral wall of the pharynx. The groove subsequently deepens and its edges fuse to form a septum, thus converting the groove into a splanchnopleuric laryngotracheal tube. This process of fusion commences caudally and extends cranially but does not involve the c...

We investigated the effects of water swallowing, pharyngeal stimulation, and oropharyngeal anesthesia on corticobulbar and craniobulbar projections to human swallowing musculature. Changes in pathway excitability were measured via electromyography from swallowed intraluminal pharyngeal and esophageal electrodes to motor cerebral and trigeminal nerve magnetic stimulation. After both water swallo...

Caenorhabditis elegans is a filter feeder: it draws bacteria suspended in liquid into its pharynx, traps the bacteria, and ejects the liquid. How pharyngeal pumping simultaneously transports and filters food particles has been poorly understood. Here, we use high-speed video microscopy to define the detailed workings of pharyngeal mechanics. The buccal cavity and metastomal flaps regulate the f...

A non-invasive and portable bioimpedance method and a device for detecting superior to inferior closure of the pharynx during swallowing have been developed. The 2-channel device measures electric impedance across the neck at two levels of the pharynx via injected currents at 40 and 70 kHz. The device has been trialled on both healthy and dysphagic subjects. Results from these trials revealed a...