Introduction to Esophageal Diseases

00:01 Hello and welcome to Gastroenterology! We will be walking through the entire GI system.

00:09 From the mouth, through the oesophagus, through the stomach, through the intestine and out through the anus. Let's begin.

00:16 At first we'll begin with the esophagus itself and with the esophagus, there's a topic known as dysphagia.

00:27 And dysphagia to you should automatically bring about many differentials and the behaviour of dysphagia becomes important to you.

00:35 What does dysphagia mean? The patient says, "Hey Doc, I feel like there's something sticking in my throat." Causes include, maybe mechanical obstruction.

00:48 So when we talk about the behaviour of dysphagia, what kind of swallowing difficulty is the patient actually feeling? There's a possibility that there might be a mechanical obstruction by that maybe, perhaps the lower esophagus sphincter is not properly opening.

01:03 Welcome to achalasia.

01:06 Maybe perhaps there's a tumour within the esophagus making it difficult to properly swallow.

01:12 So therefore, the behaviour of the dysphagia becomes a little bit different.

01:16 Is the patient experiencing dysphagia to solids? Liquids? What about the timing? Was the solids first, then liquids? Was it at the same time? All of this will then tell you as to what the diagnosis of your patient will be.

01:34 There's another term here called odynophagia.

01:37 Odynophagia means pain upon swallowing.

01:40 It is important that you be able to properly understand the language.

01:44 Whenever you hear about painful swallowing, this to you hire in a differential should perhaps mean that the patient has suffered or experienced an infection or maybe perhaps trauma - Odynophagia Often times your patient will say, "Hey Doc, I've heartburn." Patient doesn't know any better because the patient is feeling a burning sensation within the chest and so therefore describes it exactly as such.

02:13 But to you heartburn could mean, "Oh, maybe perhaps there might be esophagitis", or if there is such heartburn, the patient doesn't know any better and might be actually experiencing a myocardial infarction.