Noncardiac chest pain is defined as recurrent chest pain that is indistinguishable from ischemic heart pain after a reasonable workup has excluded a cardiac cause. Noncardiac chest pain is a prevalent disorder resulting in high healthcare utilization and significant work absenteeism. However, despite its chronic nature, noncardiac chest pain has no impact on patients' mortality. The main underl...

OBJECTIVE This study compared barium esophagram with high-resolution esophageal manometry (HRM) results to determine whether esophagram is an adequate screening examination for esophageal motility disorders, a common cause of dysphagia. STUDY DESIGN Case series with chart review. SETTING Tertiary academic medical center. SUBJECTS AND METHODS A retrospective review was completed of 281 pat...

The pathogenesis of gastrointestinal (GI) dysmotility in scleroderma is incompletely understood, although previous studies have proposed a neuropathic mechanism. We studied patients with scleroderma as compared with other connective tissue disease patients and normal controls for the presence of circulating antibodies to myenteric neurons. Serial dilutions of sera were overlaid on rat intestine...

A 58-year-old man with optic atrophy, spastic paraparesis, axonal sensorimotor peripheral neuropathy and intestinal dysmotility harbors a novel heterozygous missense mutation in the mitochondrial import signal peptide of OPA1. The case underscores the role of OPA1 in the pathogenesis of spastic paraparesis, so far reported only in very few cases, and it adds intestinal dysmotility to the spectr...

Mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy (MNGIE) is a rare multisystemic autosomal recessive disorder characterized by ptosis, gastrointestinal dysmotility, cachexia, peripheral neuropathy, and leukoencephalopathy. We aimed to raise awareness in radiologists regarding this difficult-to-diagnose syndrome, which occurs in the presence of coexistent gastrointestinal dysmotility, cache...

Gastrointestinal (GI) hypomotility and symptoms are common in Scleroderma (SSc) patients yet so far uncorrelated. Eight SSc patients and matched controls were queried about their GI dysmotility symptoms and quality of life (QoL) and underwent anorectal motility and sensory tests. Specific scoring systems were developed for anorectal symptoms and anorectal dysmotility. We found that (1) the SSc ...

We present an infant with heterochromia of the irides and a motility disorder of the oesophagus. The association between Hirschsprung's disease and heterochromia of the irides has been reported in the past and has been explained by the common origin during embryogenesis of the parasympathetic ganglion cells and the stroma of the iris.

BACKGROUND Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and gastrointestinal (GI) dysmotility disorders have a similar clinical picture, although dysmotility disorders require the attention of a specialist. Patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS) have also been described to suffer from IBS-like symptoms. No objective marker is available to distinguish between the patients. A visual analogue scale has ...