Authors: Shyam Jungade, Shraddha Jain, Shalaka D. Khobragade, Priyanka A. Telang
Dysphagia in elderly could be attributable to a number of etiological causes ranging from neurologic causes like stroke, malignancies, motility disorders, cervical osteophytic compression and changes in cervical spine curvature. There are studies which have reported the occurrence of dysphagia in patients with cervical spine osteophytes. However, the loss of cervical lordosis as a cause of dysphagia has not received much attention and is primarily a diagnosis of exclusion. Most of the studies have focused on dysphagia following anterior cervical spine surgery. This is probably first report of a case of dysphagia attributable to cervical spine curvature change due to neck muscle spasm, which was treated by manual therapy, in a 70 year old male, where all other known causes of dysphagia were excluded. We found improvement in angle of cervical lordosis between C-2 and C-7 vertebrae both by “Posterior tangent technique” and “Cobb Angle Method”. Keywords:Cervical spine, Lordosis, Dysphagia, Manual therapy, Elderly.
Open full article page