Difficulty Swallowing and Frothy Spit After Eating

[Tom1510]

I am an 19 year old male. In the past year I have been having problems with my swallowing. After eating or mid way through a meal, my throat feels full and I have constant frothy, bubbly saliva that I keep having to spit out. I went to the GI twice. The first one was in September of 2018. He did an upper endoscopy and dilated my esophagus. He said that there was a minor point of swelling but otherwise no indication of any other disease as indicated by biopsy results from samples taken. My symptoms seemed to have resolved until February of this year. The same swallowing problem was occuring if not worse. I went to a different GI who also preformed an uppper endoscopy and dilated my esophagus. He said their was nothing significant other than a swelling of the area between my stomach and esophagus. I was presrcibed pantaprazole. I went back the next week as I was still was having problems and was prescribed diazepam to relax the muscles. Although my symptoms have been relieved in the past couple months, they seem to slowly start coming back again and occur more often at night. I never really get heartburn but occasionaly I will feel really bloated after eating dinner. I have had a barium swallowing test done by a speech pathologist that concluded that my swallowing function seemed normal. I have also consulted an ENT who said he found a little mucous on my vocal cords but otherwise I seemed fine and he told me to use flonase and saline nasal spray a couple times a day. Does anyone else know why I am having these problems and if so what do you think I should do to treat? All responses are appreciated.

Tom.

[SurreyGuy]

Hi Tom. If you have had two GI opinions then it seems that they have ruled out anything serious for now. Are you in the UK? If so you may want to consider trying to be seen at one of the countries bigger upper GI centres just to rule out some of the rarer problems (not all rare problems are serious, they are just unusual). I was 19 when my achalasia started to present and it took well over three years to get the diagnosis as I was being seen by a hospital that rarely saw such a condition. (This was years ago now). I was initially told I was over anxious and this was leading to my swallowing difficulty (which of course can be an explanation). Once Insaw someone who had seen it before it all fell into place. My condition first presented with getting dry food stuck. Especially cracker biscuits. It then moved on to bread and other similar foods. I also had problems managing my saliva. There is a manometry test that can be done to look at the pressures in your oesophagus to check the oesophagus is functioning correctly. That could be a useful test, as it looks at motility of the oesophagus rather than the swallowing mechanism, but you would need to convince the consultant. Whilst i know it is distressing do take some comfort in the fact they have not found anything serious on endoscopy. Sometimes the right diagnosis takes a bit if time. Sorry i can not be more helpful.