A 17-year-old white female presented to the emergency department with chest pain 12 h after ingesting four pills of phentermine (Adipex®). She complained of retrosternal chest pain radiating into her neck with inspiration. Medical history was unremarkable, and she denied any other medications or illicit drug use. Vital signs were normal with 100% pulse oximetry. Physical examination revealed no...

Heller myotomy is the optimal surgical management for achalasia. Recurrent or persistent symptoms after surgical myotomy can occur in approximately 10% of patients [1, 2]. Failed Heller myotomy presents a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. An inadequate surgical myotomy is the commonest cause of failure. The appropriate treatment for failed surgical myotomy is controversial. Peroral endoscop...

Impedance monitoring (Imp) measures bolus transit. Combining Imp with manometry (EM) allows the effect of contractile patterns on transit to be assessed. The objective of this study is to identify bolus transit patterns in normal subjects, correlate Imp findings with the gold standard barium esophagram (Ba), and compare bolus transit with concomitant EM findings. Simultaneous Ba-Imp-EM was perf...

emergency department with an impacted foreign body in the esophagus. His medical history was marked by a mild dysphagia for solid food, present since the age of 2 years. His physical examination was unremarkable. An upper endoscopy was performed. After a coin in the esophagus was removed, an esophageal stenosis and an orifice in the esophageal wall were noticed (Fig. 1). Biopsy of the double lu...

A 68-year-old man was admitted to our hospital for chronic dysphagia for solid foods and weight loss. Clinical examination on hospital admission did not show any significant alterations. Specifically, neither lymphadenopathy or thyroid enlargement, abdominal masses, or skin abnormalities that suggested connective tissue disorders were found. Furthermore, chest radiography performed at admission...

Descriptive case report.To report a case of a diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH) patient with both massive ossification of the anterior longitudinal ligament (OALL) leading to severe dysphagia as well as ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament (OPLL) causing mild cervical myelopathy, warranting not only an anterior approach but also a posterior one.Although DISH can cau...

Esophageal dilatation in dysphagic patients with benign strictures is usually considered successful if the patients' dysphagia is alleviated. However, the relation between dysphagia and the diameter of a stricture is not well understood. Moreover, the dysphagia may also be caused by an underlying esophageal motor disorder. In order to compare symptoms and objective measurements of esophageal st...

OBJECTIVE To assess our results of a prospective algorithm applied to patients with thoracic esophageal perforation. METHODS A retrospective review of a prospective algorithm. Patients with esophageal perforation underwent an esophagram. If there was a contained esophageal perforation they were admitted, kept nothing by mouth, and restudied in 3-5 days. If the leak was not contained, they und...

A 69-year-old woman was admitted to hospital 4 times from November 2007 to June 2009. The patient had silicosis complicated by broncholithiasis, esophagobronchial fistula, and relapsed tuberculosis. She had worked as a stone crusher for 3 years and was exposed to a large amount of quartz dust. Barium esophagography, gastroesophageal endoscopy, and biopsy suggested esophageal-related chronic inf...

Purpose. This retrospective study examined the usefulness of barium esophagography, focusing on the luminal stenosis, in the response evaluation of neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NACRT) in patients with esophageal cancer. Materials and Methods. Thirty-four patients with primary advanced esophageal cancer (≥T2) who were treated with NACRT before surgical resection were analyzed. All patients und...