The most common and challenging gastrointestinal motility disorders in children include gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), esophageal achalasia, gastroparesis, chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction, and constipation. GERD is the most common gastrointestinal motility disorder affecting children and is diagnosed clinically and treated primarily with acid secretion blockade. Esophageal achala...

BACKGROUND Although achalasia is a relatively rare disease in pediatric age group, it must be considered for differential diagnosis of esophageal disorders in children with positive family history even in the absence of typical clinical manifestations. CASE PRESENTATION A 5-month old boy was hospitalized for cough and mild respiratory distress. Because of positive history of achalasia in his ...

BACKGROUND Achalasia is an esophageal motility disorder, of unknown cause, which results in increased lower esophageal sphincter tone and symptoms of difficulty swallowing. Current major therapeutic options include laparoscopic Heller myotomy (LHM) and pneumatic dilation (PD). We undertake a systematic review comparing the efficacy and safety of these 2 treatments in the treatment of esophageal...

Timed barium esophagogram (TBE) is a simple and objective method for assessing the esophageal emptying. The technique of TBE is similar to usual barium swallow with some modifications, which include taking multiple sequential films at pre-decided time interval after a single swallow of a fixed volume of a specific density barium solution. While many authors have used height and width of the bar...

Achalasia is the best understood and most readily treatable esophageal motility disorder. It serves as a prototype for disorders of the enteric nervous system with degeneration of the myenteric neurons that innervate the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) and esophageal body. Investigations into the pathogenesis have highlighted the importance of nitric oxide and the possible role of an autoimmun...

Pneumatic dilation (PD) is an effective treatment for achalasia cardia. Outcome of PD, however, varies among different studies. Recently, some groups started considering laparoscopic myotomy to be competitive to PD in treatment of achalasia considering dreaded complication like perforation following the latter therapeutic approach. Therefore, there is need to predict outcome of PD for achalasia...

BACKGROUND Achalasia is a primary esophageal motility disorder of unknown etiology associated with abnormalities in peristalsis and lower esophageal sphincter relaxation. The disease is incurable; however, definitive treatment procedures like pneumatic dilation (PD)/balloon dilation and laparoscopic esophageal myotomy (LEM) are performed to relieve dysphagia and related symptoms. Currently, the...

In the paper, a low friction pneumatic cylinder and a sliding table, and both of them are embedded with aerostatic bearings are designed. A low friction pneumatic table is constructed by combining the pneumatic cylinder and the sliding table. The characteristics for the friction force versus velocity of the pneumatic cylinder and the pneumatic table are measured. Moreover, a hybrid self-tuning ...