Carcinoma of the oesophagus with "swallow syncope".

Abstract

BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL10 MAY 1975 315 energy shocks were successful then. The initial shock was unsuccessful in 7%O (two out of 28) of patients with primary fibrillation, but a second shock of identical energy was successful in both patients. The success of the second shock when the initial one has failed29 may be related to the decreased impedance with successive shocks.30 Apart from allowing smaller and lighter defibrillators these lower energy shocks cause less myocardial damage.Our findings indicate the need for further investigation of the energy needed for defibrillation. Tacker et al.28 claim that defibrillators should have a much higher output capacity than they do at present, but high capacity output instruments would be much heavier, more cumbersome, and more expensive and, therefore, less generally available. If it is confirmed that lowenergy direct current shocks, particularly when repeated, will almost invariably correct ventricular fibrillation a cheap and generally available pocket defibrillator will be a possibility.

Swallow Syncope, a Case Report and Review of the Literature

“…Reflex-mediated vasomotor inhibitory syndrome is one of the etiological categories of syncope, and swallow syncope, included in this category, is a relatively rare syndrome[1]. To our knowledge, since Spens [2 ]described a possible case of swallow syncope in 1793, about 60 cases have been reported in the English literature (table 1) [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57]. Most patients were adults, of varying ages, but some cases of young children have also been reported [16, 29, 31, 33], and the possibility of hereditary factors has been suggested [29].…”

“…Swallow syncope occurred in the presence of underlying esophageal diseases (i.e. esophageal spasm [7, 10, 19, 25, 30], esophageal stricture [15, 20], achalasia [11, 43, 49], esophageal diverticulum [6, 8, 9], hiatus hernia [17, 19, 25, 28, 54, 56] and esophageal cancer [21, 22, 45]), and heart disease (myocardial infarction [9, 13, 18, 26, 18], rheumatic carditis [2], and digoxin use [8, 17, 30]). Some cases were reported to be associated with thoracic surgery [16, 26, 35, 51], advanced lung cancer [18, 42] and transient hypoxia [51].…”

Paroxysmal vagally mediated av block with recurrent syncope

“…Paroxysmal vagally dependent AV block resulting in syncope, but without associated electrocardiogram abnormality, is not a well recognized phenomenon. Sporadic cases of complete heart block related to certain vagotonic reflexes, such as coughing (Hart et al, 1982) and swallowing (Sapru et al, 1971;Tomlinson and Fox, 1975;Wik and Hillestad, 1975) have been reported. Two patients with recurrent vagally mediated complete AV block without any precipitating event were described by Strasberg et al, (198 1).…”

Swallow Syncope in Association with Schatzki Ring and Hypertensive Esophageal Peristalsis: Report of Three Cases and Review of the Literature

“…The leadtime before diagnosis ranges from days to decades [3,4]. Dysphagia or odynophagia is present only in a subgroup of patients with swallow syncope [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], and it has been reported with ingesting solid food [10,13,, hot or cold liquids [11,[16][17][18], and carbonated beverages [19,[20][21][22][23].…”