What is the cause of esophageal pain? Esophagitis may be a serious problem.

If you have symptoms of esophageal pain, you should be alert to esophagitis. Patients with esophagitis may also experience decreased appetite, difficulty swallowing, weight loss, and depression. Esophagitis should be promptly examined by esophagoscopy and treatment should be selected according to the condition.

1. Symptoms and Signs

1. Depression, decreased appetite or even loss of appetite. There is mucus around the mouth and nose. When chronic esophagitis occurs, weight loss gradually occurs.

2. Difficulty in swallowing, painful swallowing, and excessive salivation; or vomiting, sometimes with blood in the vomitus. Often refuses to eat after swallowing several times.

3. The esophagus is sensitive to palpation and painful in the front of the neck; pressure on the anterior abdomen may cause food reflux.

4. Pain and burning sensation in the upper abdomen or behind the sternum: This is the main clinical manifestation of this disease. The pain is particularly obvious when eating a lot and is related to body position. In severe cases, it can radiate to the neck, back, and chest, sometimes resembling the symptoms of angina pectoris.

5. Reflux: Acidic liquid or food often flows back from the stomach and esophagus to the oropharynx after meals or before going to bed at night. Other symptoms may include nausea, fever, hiccups, heartburn, bloating, discomfort when swallowing, and in severe cases, gastrointestinal bleeding due to esophageal erosion.

2. Pathological Causes

1. Swallowing hot food, sharp foreign objects or incompletely chewed bones, accidentally ingesting corrosives, etc. directly damages the esophageal mucosa and causes inflammation. When veterinarians use gastric tubes to administer medication to dogs and cats, rough use of the tubes can often damage the esophageal mucosa.

2. Physical or chemical esophagitis: The esophagitis reaction caused by radiation exposure is called radiation esophagitis. Drugs such as quinidine, tetracycline, potassium chloride, iron supplements, etc. irritate the esophageal mucosa, especially tablets that stagnate in the esophagus, which can also cause esophagitis. Esophagitis caused by overheated food can heal quickly on its own. Frequent use of a gastric tube can irritate the esophagus and cause esophagitis.

3. Using antibiotics for too long can lead to the proliferation of fungi in the esophageal mucosa and cause infection.

4. Decreased function of the lower esophageal sphincter: In normal people, there is a high-pressure area in the lower esophageal sphincter to prevent gastric contents from flowing back into the esophagus. Many reasons can weaken the function of the lower esophageal sphincter, including hiatal hernia, which can easily cause gastric and intestinal contents to reflux into the esophagus and is the main cause of inflammatory lesions of the esophageal mucosa.

5. Increased abdominal pressure: If there is a large amount of ascites or pregnancy, the abdominal pressure will increase, which can easily lead to reflux.

6. Esophageal motility disorder: Normally, when gastric contents reflux into the esophagus, the tension causes secondary peristaltic waves in the esophagus, which send the refluxed contents back into the stomach. Esophagitis can slow down esophageal motility and prolong the time that refluxed materials stay in the esophagus, aggravating the original esophagitis. Esophagitis in turn weakens the function of the lower esophageal sphincter, aggravating reflux, forming a vicious cycle.