Oesophageal Spasm

Osgood (1889) is generally credited with the introduction of the term " diffuse spasm " of the oesophagus. However, though Moersch and Camp (1934) recorded a classical description of the clinical and radiological features of the disease it attracted little interest until the introduction of oesophageal motility studies in the 1950s. Since then a characteristic motility pattern has been described (Creamer et al., 1958 ; Roth and Fleshler, 1964), and an operation which relieves the symptoms of the severely affected patients has been devised (Ellis et al., 1960). However, there remains some confusion in the terminology because "diffuse spasm" has been applied not only to the clinical entity as reported here but also to various radiological and physiological findings which, though characteristic of diffuse spasm, may also be seen under certain circumstances in patients with carcinoma (A. P. Skyring and R. M. H. Kater, personal communication), during acid infusion in oesophagitis (Siegel and Hendrix, 1963), and in asymptomatic nonagenarians (Soergel et al., 1964). Some radiologists have used the term interchangeably with rippling, curling, corkscrew, and elevator oesophagus regardless of the pathological process underlying