[Dysphagia] Fw: FEES

[eripley at yahoo.com (Irene Campbell-Taylor)]

I'm surprised that radiologists don't know of it as it is a medical term:



Cricopharyngeal bar,

 





prominent extrinsic defect on the posterior aspect of the cervical oesophagus, caused by hypertrophy and fibrosis with incomplete relaxation of the cricopharyngeus muscle. A transient cricopharyngeal bar is seen in up to 5% of persons without dysphagia and it can be produced in normal persons during the Valsalva manoeuvre. Videofluoroscopy during barium swallowing will visualize the external filling defect caused by the hypertrophic cricopharyngeal muscle. 

 

The Encyclopaedia of Medical Imaging Volume IV:1
This is incomplete in that a cricopharyngeal bar is often the first sign of a developing Zenker diverticulum in Killian's area - the "filling defect" referred to above altho this is not made clear. It occurs with incomplete anterior hyoid movement and/or incomplete UES rlaxation for reasons to be deterimued clinically.
Barbara Cole <bkcole@erols.com> wrote:





Another question--different topic. Where did the term cricopharyngeal bar
originate? Is it a speech or radiology driven term? I ask b/c our
radiologists are unfamiliar with it and the dysphagia book, older edition
by Groher, never mentions a cp bar. Is it a newer term?
-------------------------------------

I think I first heard it from our radiologists, so maybe a regional
thing????? (I'm in the mid-Atlantic area). Barbara
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Dr I Campbell-Taylor
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